The Big Picture

‘The Veil’ on Hulu follows MI6 agent Imogen, played by Elisabeth Moss, on a deadly mission that takes her from Istanbul to Paris and London.
The show explores the tension between two women, unsure whether they can trust each other in time to stop an attack on the U.S.
Moss would love the opportunity to play this complex character for another season.

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Veil.]From creator Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), the FX series The Veil, exclusively available to stream on Hulu, follows Imogen Salter (Elisabeth Moss), a highly skilled British MI6 agent with sharpened instincts that help her uncover even the most uncomfortable and dangerous of truths. Her ability to blend into any place or scenario leads her to Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan), in an effort to stop an attack on the U.S. that could result in the death of thousands, but the mission that takes her from Istanbul to Paris and London becomes a deadly game of who and what to trust.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Moss talked about why she loved the dynamic between these two women, the fun of playing a character that keeps shifting who she is according to who she needs to be, the advantage of knowing the full arc for her character going into the production, personally being a huge fan of the spy genre, wanting Imogen to be a full woman who is great at her career and who also has a romantic relationship, preparing for the fight scenes, and why she would absolutely love to play this character again, for another possible season.

The Veil (2024) A dystopian society enforces a strict divide between the elite and the common people using a symbolic veil. When a woman from the lower class accidentally uncovers what lies behind this division, her newfound knowledge sparks a dangerous journey to dismantle the oppressive system that controls every aspect of life.Release Date May 7, 2024 Cast Elisabeth Moss , Karol Steele , Alec Secareanu , Thibault de Montalembert , Yumna Marwan , Dali Benssalah , Josh Charles , James Purefoy Seasons 1

Elisabeth Moss Loved the Relationship Between the Two Women at the Center of ‘The Veil’
Image via FX

Collider: It’s really quite clever that we’re introduced to both of these women without really knowing anything about them, which allows the audience to connect with them and question them. What did you find most interesting and compelling about that dynamic?

ELISABETH MOSS: I love that. It’s a very brave thing to do. It’s definitely bold and you don’t see it that often. What I love is that you discover them, as an audience, throughout the show. What you see from these two women in episode three is totally different from episode one, and episode five is totally different from episode six. That’s so fun to watch, and it’s very fun to do. To have that constant peeling of the onion of these two women is incredibly compelling and, as an actor, it’s really fun because you get to keep developing and pushing the character along through six episodes rather than just doing the same thing every episode. You get to discover whole new parts of her. The person that she is in that first scene is different from the person she is in the second scene. That’s why it’s so interesting to watch because we’re not just learning about her, but she’s also learning what she needs to do to keep adjusting, to figure out how best to handle the situation and to get out of it, and what she wants.

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There are so many layers at play that it makes a really fascinating character study.

MOSS: Exactly. When you get something like that from Steven Knight, and you realize that you’re gonna get to play 100 different people throughout the course of the show, and you’re gonna be able to change the character from scene to scene and modulate who she is and how much of herself she’s showing, and then realize that there’s a completely other person there a few episodes later, you go, “Yes, please, where do I sign? This is exactly what I wanna be doing.”

How did you approach playing someone like her? With a character like this, who only tells people what she wants to tell them, whether it’s true or not, do you have to build that backstory for yourself, so that you know who she is at the core of it all? Do you prefer to just deal with whatever she’s dealing with, in the moment?

MOSS: I was lucky to have all six scripts before we started, so I knew where we were going. I knew where we were ending up. I knew who she was at her core and her deeper, darker secrets. I was able to think of it as a woman who is playing another woman who’s playing another woman. I was able to build it from the inside out. The conversation I had with Steve, at the very beginning before I signed on, was the pivotal conversation. It was the bedrock of everything. I remember him talking to me about it, and then he finished, and I said, “Oh, so she’s an actor.” And he was like, “Yeah, exactly.” I was like, “Okay, got it.” We were talking about this concept of truth and lies, and for me as an actor, I hate when people say, “Oh, actors must make really good liars.” I get what they mean, but at the same time, as an actor, I don’t feel like I’m lying. If I’m doing a scene, I should feel like I’m being honest and telling the truth, and I’m using real emotions and real thoughts. I’m taking bits and pieces of myself, so it doesn’t feel like a lie to me. It’s not me. I’m totally lying. I’m playing somebody that’s not myself, and that is who Imogen is. That’s what she does and that’s why she’s so good at what she does because she doesn’t believe that she’s lying. She believes that she’s telling the truth. That’s why she’s so good at becoming different people. It’s not about changing your hair or wearing funny glasses. It’s about figuring out different ways to be trustworthy to somebody.

Being Part of the Spy Genre with ‘The Veil’ Was a Dream Come True for Elisabeth Moss
Image via FX

Are you personally a fan of the spy genre?

MOSS: A massive fan. That and romantic comedy are probably my two favorite genres, as different as they may be. I’ve seen every single Bourne movie. I’ve seen every Mission: Impossible movie. I’ve seen all the classic sixties and seventies spy films. I’ve read about actual real spies before. For me, getting to step into that world was a total dream come true, and it was very fulfilling. It was exactly what I wanted it to be. You don’t often get to see a woman play this kind of part, especially on television. It definitely has been done. Jen Garner did it fantastically with Alias, and there was The Americans, of course, but we don’t see this particular woman, who’s really using a different skill set. And so, that was really exciting to me, to be able to bring that to a television audience.

Was it at all disappointing that there isn’t a rolodex of MI6 spies that make themselves available to talk to and that you can go hang out with?

MOSS: Yes, totally. It’s very disappointing. I had this fantasy that I was gonna be meeting someone in a dark bar and getting some secrets from them. The thing about spies is they don’t wanna talk to you and they don’t wanna tell you their secrets. It’s maddening, especially with MI6. The lore is that the CIA is a little bit more open – former spies, not current spies – and MI6 is pretty close-lipped. We did have a great consultant who’s a former intelligence agent and he’s British. I also read as much as I could. They don’t necessarily just sit you down and go, “Okay, let me tell you what it’s like to be a spy.” The whole idea is they don’t talk about it.

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There’s a fun moment in this, with the scene when Imogen is trying to prove a point, so she gets up in the restaurant and tells the room that she’s been proposed to, and you do so in an American accent because she’s pretending to be American. Was that something that had always been scripted? Was that something that got added because it was fun to play with the accent for a moment?

MOSS: We did a Southern accent because we wanted to take it a little further away from my own voice, but I believe that was in the script. In the show, there actually used to be a time when I did an Australian accent that we ended up cutting. It was fun. It’s not the way that I sound, but to be that woman – that kind of American tourist in Paris – and make fun of that was fun. That’s what I love about this show and why I’m excited for people who love Peak TV, or is it just called television now? It feels really different for me, in the sense that it does have a lightness to it. Of course, it’s a drama and it has very serious moments, but it’s also fun. There’s action, great locations, there’s handsome men and beautiful people. It feels fun, and for me, coming out of my job with The Handmaids Tale, which is obviously much more serious and it would be inappropriate to have too much fun in that world, it was really a wonderful break for me and a wonderful way to stretch my legs and just do something that was fun where I was running around in great boots in Paris and kicking some men’s butt. It was awesome.

Elisabeth Moss Wanted Her ‘The Veil’ Character to Live a Full Life

I actually really like the fact that this is not a woman who is only about her work. She also has this romance that she’s clearly had before we even meet her in this. Was it important for you to show those other sides of her and not just have her be focused on the mission? It’s a compelling enough story that you could have just focused on the mission, but you do take time to explore other things, as well.

MOSS: I’m so glad that you brought that up. That’s really astute because it was actually really important to us. Denise [Di Novi], my executive producer, and I specifically wanted to subvert that trope of, in order for a woman and especially a spy, to be good at what she does, she has to shut everything else off. Actually, it’s not just spies. What am I talking about? It’s everyone. People think, in order to be good at what you do, you have to suffer in other areas of your life. There’s this thing where you can’t really be a full woman, you must be cutting off some part of your life. And we were like, “Fuck that.” It was really important to us to make sure that she had a great romantic, sexy relationship with Malik. Why can’t she be kicking ass and doing a really, really good job at what she does and killing it, and then go have a little afternoon romp with a French man. So many women I know, that’s the reality of their lives. Not that we’re all going and having romps with handsome Frenchman, but that would be amazing. The women I know have lives where they have what they want, and they get to do what they want, and they don’t have to be traumatized to do a good job. That was really important to us. When James Bond has a dalliance with a beautiful woman, it doesn’t mean that he’s not gonna kick ass in the next scene. That’s who he is, and we love him for it. So, we felt like we had to give that to her. That’s who she is, as well. You just don’t see that very often.

I thought the dynamic between you and Josh Charles is fun because these are individuals who wouldn’t have anything to do with each other if they didn’t have to, so that creates a very interesting relationship. What did you most enjoy about finding that with him?

MOSS: Max is my favorite character in the show. Whenever we did readings or whenever we were working on the scripts, I would always insist on reading Max because he was my favorite. I think their dynamic is so great because there’s this tension between them that makes you wonder, “Is it sexual? Is it competitive? Is it professional?” You’re not quite sure. But there is this tension between them. They both want the same thing, but they both have different ways of going about it. He obviously believes that she can get the job done, or he wouldn’t be working with her, but he has this natural American machismo attitude, which of course gives her the opportunity to shove that right back in his face because she’s not gonna take that. It’s a great dynamic. I love their scenes. Josh and I had so much fun. Josh and I knew each other socially. I actually went to ballet school with his wife, many, many years ago. But we had never worked together, which we just thought was crazy. We were like, “How have we not worked together?” We come from the same world and are cut from the same cloth. I just think he lights up the screen every time he comes on. He’s so fucking good in the show.

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Do you enjoy the fight training and stunt preparation that comes with doing something like this? Is it fun to play someone that is so skilled? Do you ever feel like you’ve actually had enough preparation?

MOSS: There are three significant fight scenes and I worked on them for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. Basically the entire time, we were practicing and working on one or another. I love that stuff. I’m a former dancer, so I’m used to having to practice. I’m used to having to drill something, over and over. It’s so fun. I’m not an athletic person, necessarily. I don’t take kickboxing classes. I’m not that kind of person. For me, to feel strong is just so much fun. It’s not easy, by any means, but it’s definitely a really fun challenge. You get to do all kinds of different things that you don’t usually get to do. I got to learn how to use a knife, and I’ve never done that before. I will say running on the mountain in snow boots at a high altitude was a step too far for me. That was a little like, “No, we’re good. This is too much.” It was important to work out her fighting style. Given that she’s not big, I’m 5’3”, we had to work out how somebody like that would overpower a man bigger than her, and that was fun to do. The stunt team was fantastic. It was fun to work out how she would use her wrist manipulation or be able to get under him and use her smaller stature in her favor. We didn’t wanna give her a distinctive fighting style, as far as a specific path. We wanted her to be able to have her own style, and that was really fun to work out.

Would Elisabeth Moss Want to Return for Another Season of ‘The Veil’?
Image via FX

This feels like a character that you could put in another place and send her on another mission, and she’d be endlessly fascinating to watch. Would you be game for more if the network was on board and if Steven Knight felt there was more story to tell? Is she a character you’d want to revisit?

MOSS: I am not gonna be coy about this, yes, in a fucking heartbeat. First of all, Steven’s writing is just so delicious to do. I have loved working with FX. Fargo and FX were the reason why I did The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s the reason I thought, “Oh, there’s this thing after Mad Men that’s continuing to happen in television and in streaming.” I have loved working with them. When we got to the end of the season, I personally felt like we had just started. We’ve just scratched the surface. There’s no other way for me to say it. She’s so interesting and complicated and good at what she does. The opportunity to drop her into different locations, give her another mission, have her play somebody else, and give her another name, it just seems like it’s too fun not to think about.

The Veil is available to stream on Hulu. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Hulu