The Night Agent Boss Shawn Ryan Previews Peter’s ‘Morally Queasy’ Season 2, New Dynamic With Rose
Netflix will open up the next chapter for The Night Agent when Season 2 arrives this Thursday, Jan. 23 — nearly two years after the hit thriller dropped Season 1.
Based on the novel of the same name by Matthew Quirk, Season 1 of The Night Agent followed Gabriel Basso’s Peter Sutherland, a low-level FBI Agent who worked in the basement of the White House, manning a phone that never rang — until it did. That call, from panicked cybersecurity expert Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), propelled the two into a conspiracy that ultimately led all the way to the Oval Office. All the while, the heroic couple was dogged by not just a team of lovebird assassins, but an inscrutable bunch of White House bigwigs.
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Season 2 is set in motion by the hunt for a mole who betrayed Peter during a Night Action mission and nearly got him killed, forcing him to go AWOL on his handler, Catherine Weaver (played by East New York’s Amanda Warren.
Also new for Season 2 are Brittany Snow (American Dreams) as Alice, Peter’s Night Action partner and mentor; Teddy Sears (The Flash) as Warren, an intelligence officer who becomes the target of a Night Action investigation; Arienne Mandi (The L Word: Generation Q) as Noor, a low-level aide in the Iranian mission to the UN in New York; Louis Herthum (The Peripheral) as Jacob Monroe, a broker of valuable intel; and Berto Colon (Power Book II: Ghost) as Solomon, Monroe’s right-hand man.
You also have Keon Alexander (The Expanse) as Javad, head of security for the Iranian Mission to the UN; Navid Negahban (Homeland) as Abbas, a distinguished Iranian Ambassador to the UN; Michael Malarkey (The Vampire Diaries‘ Enzo) as Markus, a trained military leader loyal to his uncle who was recently convicted in the Hague of War Crimes; and Rob Heaps (Imposters) as Tomas, who is desperate to return his family to power after his dictator father’s conviction.
TVLine spoke with Night Agent showrunner (and fellow Rockford, Ill. native!) Shawn Ryan about continuing Peter Sutherland’s Night Agent adventures without any source material, how Season 2 feeds into the already-ordered Season 3, and more.
TVLINE | I had a good time speaking with your cast this morning at the Plaza. [Video coming soon to TVLine.]
SHAWN RYAN | It’s an intoxicating cast. They’re a great bunch.
TVLINE | My God, the women are great. I acknowledged how they’re playing three such distinctly strong and interesting characters, and how often do three actresses get to share such meaty, complicated scenes with each other?
Well, it’s interesting — one of the things I did between Season 1 and Season 2 was I wrote down a list for me and the other writers of things that I thought worked about Season 1 that I wanted to make sure that we had in Season 2. One of them was “strong female characters that don’t always get good things to do in shows in this genre”; it’s something that I want to make sure we do every year.
Obviously, we’ve got Peter at the center of things and he’s fantastic, but finding the right stories and the right characters to have these strong female representations…. In many ways I thought Noor occupied a space for us in Season 2 that Peter did in Season 1, in that she’s the least important person in an important place and she gets thrust into importance as the season goes on.
TVLINE | You and I spoke before about how was no second Night Agent book from Matthew Quirk for you to work off of, how you’d had to make this up from whole cloth. When you were coming up with a Season 2 story, what was not interesting to you to do, and what was interesting?
Well, I certainly didn’t want to do anything that too obviously repeated ourselves. I didn’t want to just have Peter and Rose end up in the exact same situation with the same emotions. So, having Rose sort of seek Peter out and then get caught up in this was better than finding another thing that puts Rose in danger that he’s got to respond to. So in many ways, while Peter came to her physical rescue in Season 1, I feel like in Season 2 Rose comes to his sort of spiritual rescue.
TVLINE | What else were you interested in doing? What was your “must” for Season 2?
Season 1 was logistically very difficult for Peter, but morally kind of clear. “What was the right thing to do?” was clear for him to do, and he did it. One of the things I really wanted in Season 2 was to make things morally difficult for him. One of the lessons I learned back on The Unit, David Mamet would always talk about how “good drama isn’t the choice between right and wrong; good drama is the choice between two wrongs.” I’ve always held onto that as we’ve broken stories.
We learn through the book that Peter’s a very moral guy, a very principled guy, and he’s going to do the right thing. So, we endeavored hard in Season 2 to try to make it much more difficult for him to know what the right thing to do was, to struggle with that. We see [in one of the episodes] that it sickens him to tell a lie, but he has to do it for the greater good. Taking a very principled character and putting him in a job that is very morally queasy was something that felt like a good evolution in Season 2.
TVLINE | I was excited when I learned that both Brittany Snow (American Dreams) and Teddy Sears (The Flash) would be in Season 2.
You know, Brittany initially auditioned for Rose back in Season 1 and was one of our finalists. I was really intrigued with the idea [of casting her in Season 2] because she’s known more for different kinds of shows than this, and nothing pleases me more than when I can find something that kind of defies expectations. I think about using Anthony Anderson as this really scary guy on The Shield, shortly after he was, like, making Kangaroo Jack. I always love when actors are capable of more than you think they are and they can prove it.
TVLINE | There’s a presidential election looming throughout Season 2, and yet Kari Matchett’s Travers isn’t running for reelection. I guess her candidacy would be a little tainted?
I think having a vice president and chief of staff who plotted to try to kill her [in Season 1] and all those things proved a little too politically toxic for reelection. In many ways she’s an honorable person surrounded by dishonorable people in Season 1, and I think she’s done the honorable thing by trying to give the country a clean break. But there may be unintended consequences to that.
TVLINE | Lastly, you got an early Season 3 pick-up. Does the Season 2 finale in any way tee up what Season 3 will look like?
We worked hard in Season 2 to tell a complete, satisfying story, but to leave some questions that can provide a launching pad for Season 3. So, I will say there’s a little bit more carryover from Season 2 to 3 than there was from Season 1 to 2, but I would promise the audience that it’s not just a pure cliffhanger. There’s a lot of resolution and a lot of satisfaction in Season 2.
TVLINE | You’re not doing Wicked: Part 1 and Wicked: Part 2.
Exactly.
Want scoop on The Night Agent, or for any other TV show ? Shoot an email to [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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