‘The Agency’ Stars Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith Pitch Changes for Season 2

As The Agency heads into filming season two, Jeffrey Wright and Jodie Turner-Smith have some specific thoughts about where they would like to see their characters’ storylines go.

Wright portrays Henry Ogletree, CIA London Deputy Station Chief and mentor to Michael Fassbender’s Martian, in Showtime‘s espionage thriller from Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. An American remake of the French series Le Bureau des Légendes that originally aired in 2015, The Agency has been set closer to modern day so it can address current world issues like the war in Ukraine and crisis in Sudan. Because the timeframe is set a few years earlier, however, the Butterworth brothers previously told The Hollywood Reporter that the series wouldn’t address the real-time unfolding of the second Trump administration and its global impact. Yet there is one issue stemming from Donald Trump’s current presidency that Wright would like to see an exception made.

“I’d love to have Henry be challenged as a DEI hire,” Wright tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I’d love that to come down the pike. That his competency is questioned by ideologues relative to things that are currently in the political climate in Washington. I’d love to address that and smack it in the ass. I’d love to. I think it would be fitting, but also it would be my tiny slither of civic duty given the times.”

The cast and creators of the Showtime series haven’t let on much about season two, which begins filming at the end of April, but one thing we know is in store for Henry is a more contentious relationship with Martian who, in the season one finale, agreed to be a double agent for the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service to save his love interest Samia (Jodie Turner-Smith).

“Over the course of the first season, there’s this relationship, this bond between the two of them that’s been established. There’s a mutual respect and there’s this reciprocal need and trust, but you begin to see a bit of doubt creep in from Henry’s perspective,” says Wright. “As we go on, we’ll begin to explore whether that crack widens and what is revealed inside should be fun.”

Adds Fassbender, explaining the backstory between his character and Wright’s, “You have trained me in a way; you’ve taken me under your wing back in the day, so there is that deep betrayal then that’s going to be experienced.”

Digging deeper into the foundation of the show and its main characters, as it was set in the first 10 episodes, is a large marker of season two, says Fassbender, who’s also an executive producer of the series. “Everything that’s introduced in the first season just tightens now. I’m glad that the audience responded to the first season because it is a bit of a slow burn and you’re sort of introduced to these characters and each of their different stories, and then things start ramping up. It doesn’t let up right from the first episode of season two. It ratchets through the 10 episodes. We were playing with that towards the end, Jeffrey and I, that they’re starting to become enemies and it’s an interesting dynamic that’s going to develop.”

“Ultimately the veil at the end of the first season drops from Henry’s face,” adds Wright, “and all of this disloyalty and all of the conflicted things that blind him to what’s actually going on begin to fall away.”

For Richard Gere, who stars as CIA London Station Chief Bosko, maintaining a veil of mystery is essential to his character. “I don’t want this guy to be knowable,” says Gere. “I want him to be trustworthy. I want you to feel that he’s solid, but the solidity is hard won, and probably being unknowable is how he got there. I definitely want it to feel like he knows what these guys are going through. He’s been there.”

That desire stems from Gere’s first conversation with executive producer Joe Wright, who also directed the show’s first two episodes. “The question he asked me was, ‘Do you think he’d kill somebody? Has he killed someone?’ It threw me back in myself, and I said, ‘Either he did it himself or he called the play, so he’s got blood on his hands,’” adds Gere. “He knows the taste of blood; he understands, and I want that to be underlying where this guy’s coming from.”

Samia also remains a bit of an enigma, her allegiance to her country outweighing her love for Martian when she turns down his attempt to recruit her to the CIA, his first effort at saving her life after his actions put it in jeopardy.

“It’s a very complicated moment for her. I could just say, yes, it’s a strong moral compass and she obviously has these strong beliefs, but also she’s confronting heartbreak at the same time,” Turner-Smith tells THR. “You are realizing: I actually don’t know this person at all; this person that I thought I knew better than anyone, that knew me better than anyone. That moment was always about more than just that. It’s also about her trust for the institution that he’s trying to bring her into, it’s about what she wants for her country and what she thinks is fair and who she thinks is good and bad. It’s also about the fact that she doesn’t know who this person is and he’s betrayed her and broken her heart, and is wanting to use her at the same time. There’s all these alarms going off that are just so loud, you can’t have a measured response.”

Samia’s fate remains unknown as she’s reported to be be held in the Sudanese prison Kober, known for its treacherous conditions, which is the intel that leads Martian to surrender to James Richardson’s (Hugh Bonneville) condition to become a double agent. But like Wright, Turner-Smith is hoping to be able to sway the show’s creators to a more personally favorable outcome.

“Because I’ve seen the show, the French version, I keep on trying to stalk the Butterworths to be like, ‘So can we make certain changes so that I can get some more time with this one and some time with these guys?’” she says, pointing to Fassbender, Wright and Gere. “I keep coming in with my suggestions of how I would rather this not go. Also, I’m very upset by the ending of the original show, and I would like for us to end differently. Traumatized. I’m still traumatized.”

Whether the Butterworths took Turner-Smith or Wright up on their character suggestions will have to wait for the season two premiere, but Wright remains firm in the opportunity for the series to explore pressing current events “so long as we are thinking critically, so long as it’s smart, so long as it’s well drawn, well researched and objective to the extent that it can be,” he says.

“I get asked this question, ‘Do actors do have the responsibility to comment on [issues]?’ No, we don’t,” adds wright. “But if these things are well considered, if there’s been a fair amount of good thought that’s gone into it, and if it’s a part of the consensus and works within the realm of the show, then go for it. So we’ll see what comes down the pike.”