Editor’s Note: Spoilers ahead for The Agency, Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2.

The Big Picture

Michael Fassbender tells Collider how his new series,
The Agency
delves into the psychological toll of living multiple lives, intertwining lies and truth.
The series features intense action and physicality with a star-studded cast.
Staying true to the French series,
The Agency
respects
Le Bureau des Légendes’
tone.

Spy shows have long captivated audiences with their twisty plots and high-stakes drama with shows like The Americans or Homeland exceling at making the personal more political. While these shows pull back layers of deception and intrigue, Showtime’s newest espionage thriller, The Agency taps into these complexities to bring a fresh take to the genre. Based on the French hit Le Bureau des Légendes, the series follows Michael Fassbender’s Martian, a deep-cover CIA operative returning to London Station after years undercover. As the series delves into the psychological toll of living multiple lives, Fassbender tells Collider exclusively that his character’s “lies and truth are totally interwoven.”

With a star-studded cast, including Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere and Jodie Turner-Smith, and grounded in its gritty, realistic tone, The Agency is more than just a fitting addition to Showtime’s legacy of prestige dramas. It also features intense action and physicality that Fassbender describes as demanding yet essential to the story. “We’ve got some action sequences, but not crazy stuff. It’s, in a lot of ways, more cerebral,” he says of the 10-episode series now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime.

As the X-Men: Days of Future Past actor states, preparing for the role also took up a great deal of mental and physical discipline. “It was very important for me to get up early and go to the gym every morning before we started,” he says. “I had a routine in place… bringing physicality into it that way was very helpful for me, just sort of mentally.” With twists that will keep viewers guessing and a character grappling with fractured identities, The Agency doesn’t just deliver thrills — it also explores the blurred lines between deception and survival in a high-stakes world.

How ‘The Agency’ Blurs Lies and Truth
“If he’s out in the field and he makes a misstep, he’s dead.”

As The Agency finds Fassbender’s Martian ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station, things take a turn when his former flame, Samia (Smith) reappears, reigniting their romance. Hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage, Martian has a hard time maintaining his identity among the numerous worlds he’s found himself in. With the series digging into the complexities of identity for real agents who’ve lived undercover for long periods, his struggle as a dad, agent and partner is not easy and the persona soon becomes the “real person” as Fassbender puts it.

“I think that’s why he’s so effective and so successful because he can just become Paul Lewis and create Paul Lewis, and Paul Lewis is Brandon,” he says. “They don’t diverge too much, and therefore, lies and truth are totally interwoven into both of those characters.”

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Because of the high stakes surrounding Martian, Fassbender admits if his character makes one “misstep, he’s dead, especially being in the non-official capacity that he is.” This constant duality creates an underlying tension throughout the series, evident in moments like Martian’s interactions with his daughter. “He just lies to her,” Fassbender shares, reflecting on a scene where his character fakes details about an apartment. “If he doesn’t [lie], it could kill him… just purely as a form of survival, with lies and truth, he doesn’t tell the difference anymore. I’m hoping that, in the portrayal of the character, the audience is also like, ‘Which one is the real one, and when is he telling the truth, and when is he lying?’”

Fans of ‘Le Bureau’ Will Appreciate ‘The Agency’
“It feels grounded, and there’s not a lot of fantasy element to it.”

For Fassbender, staying true to the tone of the critically acclaimed French series Le Bureau des Légendes was paramount in shaping The Agency. While the goal was to honor the original, showrunners, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth worked with Smokehouse Productions’ executive producers, George Clooney and Grant Heslov to craft something distinctly new.

“We wanted to definitely respect the original series because it’s so good and a lot of the things there worked really well, the sort of granular detail of what it takes to work in this industry,” he says before stating it has a distinctively unique personality while still respecting the series. “It feels grounded, and there’s not a lot of fantasy element to it, and I think we’ve definitely honored that.”

Sharing how some of it served as a “blueprint” for the stories they wanted to tackle, Fassbender adds they’ll always “change, obviously, with what’s happening in the world” today. “But we had a fantastic structure to work off,” he says, adding the show enhances its nuance by dealing with U.S. geopolitics. “There are the cultural differences and the way that the Butterworths wrote the dialogue and the rhythm that they bring to it is definitely different [from] the original. I can see that just with my own character… I feel like his ego is more on display than Malotru was in the original, and he’s more provocative.”

The Agency streams Fridays on Paramount+ with Showtime.

Watch on Paramount+

The Agency is a 2024 espionage thriller following covert CIA agent Martian, who is recalled to London Station, disrupting his undercover life. As a former romance rekindles, Martian’s career and true identity are jeopardized, leading him into a high-stakes world of international intrigue and deception.Release Date November 29, 2024 Cast Jeffrey Wright , Michael Fassbender , Jodie Turner-Smith , Saura Lightfoot Leon , Katherine Waterston , John Magaro , Alex Reznik , Harriet Sansom Harris , India Fowler , Reza Brojerdi , Richard Gere Main Genre Drama Seasons 1 Network Paramount+ with Showtime Directors Joe Wright Producers Bob Yari , David Glasser , David Hutkin , George Clooney , Grant Heslov , Jez Butterworth , Michael Fassbender , Ron Burkle , Pascal Breton , John-Henry Butterworth , Nina L. Diaz , Grant Heslov Expand