[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for The Night Agent.]From show creator Shawn Ryan and based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, the Netflix original series The Night Agent (which has already been picked up for a second season) is an action thriller that follows Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), a low-level FBI Agent assigned to a phone in the basement of the White House that never rings. The taint of his FBI agent father dying in a car accident before the truth was discovered about whether he’d truly committed the treason he was suspected of has led Peter to where he now is. But when that phone unexpectedly rings, he quickly finds himself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, unsure of who to trust and fighting just to stay alive.
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During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Basso talked about what reeled him in with The Night Agent, how he feels about auditions, being deeply involved with the action, why the romance with Peter and Rose (Luciane Buchanan) works so well, whether Peter is satisfied with the truth he learns about his father, the crazy shooting schedule, and how the events of the first season could affect Peter in a possible second season.

Collider: When the opportunity to do this came your way, what was the thing that reeled you in? Was it the thriller aspect of the story? Was it the specific character? Was it just getting to live out a James Bond fantasy? What was it that made you want to do it?

GABRIEL BASSO: It was Shawn [Ryan]’s vision for the show, which was as grounded as he could get it, for Peter and what he’s going through. He wanted to never have him be untouchable. He gets hurt in fights. He’s at the end of his rope, by the end of the season. So, Shawn’s vision for the show is what made me wanna do it.

Image via Netflix

What was the casting process like for this? I read that you sent in a tape, but that Shawn Ryan wasn’t immediately convinced because you had a serious beard at the time, but then he ended up eventually circling back to you. When all of that was happening, were you told you didn’t have the role? Did you hear anything?

BASSO: I have a lot of other stuff I try to do with my life, and acting is pretty far down the list. So, once I send a tape off, I just forget about it and understand the nature of the beast, which is that it’s out of your control and something as small as a beard can take away a role. It’s a total release of control and you put your fate in someone else’s hand. It’s difficult, if you really like the project or you really like the character, but at the end of the day, what you want is the best product. If you trust the person that you’re sending the tape to, you have to trust their judgment. It’s a catch-22, where you’re like, “Man, I really want to be involved in this, but I’m also deferring to their judgment.” that’s just the nature of the whole process. If they don’t cast me, then it’s not like I have a right to tell Shawn that he doesn’t know how to make a great show. He clearly knows what he’s doing.

Where did you start with your preparation for Peter? You’ve talked about how you typically already train, but did you do anything to prepare to play him because of his specific physicality?

BASSO: Yeah, I fight a lot in real life and I train a lot, almost on a daily basis, so nothing physical required that much preparation for me. It was more the differences in style of martial arts. Stunt fighting is almost its own thing. In real martial arts and real fighting, you wanna do the least amount of telegraphing. You wanna get from point A to point B as quick as possible, and that doesn’t read on camera. I almost had to re-learn how to fight, which is crazy to think about, since I’ve been doing it my whole life. The toughest thing for me was breaking my muscle memory of how to fight in real life.

Did you have a favorite fight scene or action sequence that you got to do in this?

BASSO: Yeah. I was involved, pretty early on, with the whole fight choreography. Once they realized I could fight, they included me a lot, in all that stuff. I pitched one triangle slam, where Briggs’ character has me in a triangle choke, at the end of the season, and I pick him up and slam him on the ground. That was a really cool moment for me because it’s all strength. The stunt guy couldn’t help me in that position because of the weight distribution. It’s a dead weight, so it was basically all on me to pick him up and slam him into the ground.

Image via Netflix

One of the things that tends to kill thrillers like this is that they just don’t know how to work in romance, but I thought that this series really weaves in the romance really well. It felt very natural and like it really evolved out of the story, instead of feeling forced. What do you think was really the key to making the relationship between Peter and Rose work as well as it does?

BASSO: I think just being patient. The characters go through a lot, and they’re really the only constants for one another, in the whole experience. By the time their relationship develops, later in the season, the whole world is against them both and the other person is there with them in that. There’s this comfort, but they’ve also not lied to each other, the entire show. I think there’s an appreciation for the other person being a source of truth and support. The physicality came secondary, if not tertiary to everything else. The emphasis wasn’t on that. It’s not like they took two people and just smushed them together and said, “Love each other now.” It was very natural, almost to where you probably could have done the whole thing without them being in a relationship, just developing a really good friendship, which I appreciate. Sometimes romantic stuff feels a little gratuitous and shows, just because they wanna cater to that, and Shawn and the writers just wanted to make real people.

I love the dynamic between Peter and Diane Farr because it goes back and forth, with the audience wondering whether she’s good or bad, and then thinking they know the answer, but then not being sure again. As the audience, it’s fun to keep having that misdirection. What was it like to find that dynamic and work with Hong Chau?

BASSO: She obviously crushed it. I think it has a lot to do with how nuanced Shawn and the writers wanted to be with her character. Yeah, she was evil, but her motivating factor differed from the people that got her involved in the whole thing to begin with. She is a traitor. She is lying to Peter, but she’s doing what she thinks is right. She’s sacrificing the needs of the few for the needs of the many. The ends justify the means, essentially. It’s moral degeneracy, where she’s saving everyone by taking away his freedom, as opposed to immoral degeneracy, which would probably just be evil and trying to murder people. It’s a lot more subtle, but it lends itself to a more complete character.

And it’s so interesting because you can see that there are moments where she does genuinely care about Peter and want to help him, but then she’s just in way too deep.

BASSO: Yeah, she cares about Peter. She cares about the President. You can’t wade through mu and not get your hands dirty. She got involved, as opposed to cutting it off at the pass. Instead of getting killed, she chose to play the game. At that point, you can’t really control how dirty you’re getting.

I love how that this crazy assassin couple is pursuing you throughout the season. What was it like to always have this completely unhinged couple chasing after you, for the whole season?

BASSO: It was great. Phoenix [Raei], who played Dale, was really great. Having his cold, clinical killer attached to Eve’s crazy, unhinged killer was nice. It was like, why are these two bonding over this? It is crazy to think that they were after us. It was really cool how all the action tied into character. You really felt invested, even if you didn’t like the person.

Image via Netflix

You’ve talked about how the trauma that Peter suffers in these fights really adds up throughout the show. By the time he gets to the end of the season and learns the truth, and learns that it isn’t really the truth he wanted to learn, does it just matter to him that he knows the truth? Is he satisfied with knowing the truth, even if he doesn’t like what the truth is?

BASSO: Yeah. A big thing that frustrated him was how his dad instilled in him how important due process was and that you’re innocent until proven guilty, and then here’s everyone saying his father’s guilty without due process. So, having that circle be completed, even if it’s not what he wanted to know, the truth, however brutal it may be, in the long run, is more helpful for people than a comforting lie.

There’s such an interesting character arc for Peter, throughout this season. What was it like to shoot his journey? Did you at least did get to shoot this in episode order? Were you shooting multiple episodes at a time? What was it like to keep track of everything?

BASSO: It was hell. The shooting schedule, because of COVID, people would come in and test positive. And then, the weather would affect the scheduling. At one point, we had three units going. If you originally were supposed to have a day off, you were now on third unit, shooting some things. If you were wrapped on first unit, you’d shoot over at second unit. At one point, I think we had five episodes going at the same time. It was crazy, in that sense, but I think it worked in the show because you were trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Peter seems like a guy who really had no idea that he could be and would be as good of an agent as he ultimately is. He was being held back at work, but he was also holding himself back because he didn’t have that truth about his father. By the end of the season, how much more confident is he in his skills and in his instincts, and how do you think that’ll change him, if you get to do a Season 2?

BASSO: He is capable at what he’s doing. Yeah, he was thrown in above his head, and he had to look to Rose and all these other people to help him out. But I think if there was a Season 2, his MO would almost shift completely because he’d now be a Night Agent. I’d have to talk to Shawn about what that mission would be. I’m sure it all depends on the context of where you’d see him next, but I’m sure his training would shift from, “I’m an FBI agent,” to killing people. Whatever he’s being asked to do, I’m sure the emphasis would shift and the goal would shift, significantly. He’d probably feel a little out of his depth again.

Image via Netflix

Obviously, by the end of the season, things are definitely set up to move forward with more stories. Have you thought about what you would like to see him do or what you would like to get to do in a second season?

BASSO: Yeah, I didn’t like how Wick got away. I think Peter would have his own little personal vendetta against Wick, and he’d go after him. I would also love to see, just generally, the action choreography and shooting style not be as pressed for time as we were. We didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse and do all this stuff, so we had to get a bunch of angles. I would love if the action scenes were more deliberate and planned, and we had a lot more oners, or single takes to get the action, where you never feel like we’re hiding something in an edit or a cut. I want it to be a unique show on television, or on a streamer, where we’re not having to hide the fact that I don’t fight. It’d be great to see the action feel grounded and real, and the fact that I can do it is unique, so it would be cool to see that.

Is there just something inherently cool about being part of a political thriller like this, where you’re playing a character that essentially saves the president and saves the world from the bad guys? A lot of actors talk about how fun it is to play the bad guy, but is it also just really fun to be the guy who saves the day and saves everybody?

BASSO: It is fun. But I’d also say that I don’t think Peter has won. There’s always evil, and there are always gonna be traitors, and there’s always gonna be a new head of some evil plot that pops up. It’s politics and its power and it’s zero accountability in holding the government accountable, but it’s not all lost. Peter did save the president. But the deeper Peter goes into this world, there are probably proxy wars being fought that people don’t even know about. There’s always gonna be another bad guy. And it can also be, “Oh, it turns out that guy you killed, that I told you was bad, was good.” There’s always gonna be deception. If Peter is gonna be in this world, it’s gonna be interesting to see whether he continues to pursue objective truth, regardless of what that means for himself and his own safety, or whether he starts to blend morally and the lines get a little more gray.

The Night Agent is available to stream at Netflix.