Richard Gere on His TV Turn in ‘The Agency’ and Moving His Family to Spain
When Richard Gere was approached to join The Agency, Showtime’s take on the French drama Le Bureau, as a lead TV series regular — his first stateside — he had a few stipulations for his character.
“It’s important for me that he be someone who’s grounded in knowing what it’s like to be, essentially, a fictional character out there and have multiple names, multiple passports, multiple friends in different universes and be able to traverse these different universes without destroying yourself,” Gere tells The Hollywood Reporter of his character, Bosko, in the spy thriller.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
“I wanted to lay that pipe early that this is something he has. It’s in his DNA, and when we do explore it later on, we’re going to come to understand why he behaves the way he does in some of these situations,” he adds.
Bosko is the London station chief to whom Jeffrey Wright’s Henry, director of operations for the CIA, and Michael Fassbender’s agent Martian, returning from a covert stint abroad, report. Having spent eight years undercover himself, he wants to see to it that Martian successfully re-acclimates to his real life as Paul Lewis, while answering to the demands of the director of the CIA (played by guest star Dominic West) as they manage real-life global concerns such as the war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis in Sudan in The Agency‘s real-world timeline.
Below, Gere talks with THR about gaining his footing on the set of the TV series and why, despite a move abroad with his family, he’ll remain politically engaged in the U.S.
***
It doesn’t seem quite right that this is your first major U.S. television role as a series regular. What made you make a comeback to TV for this character specifically?
Yeah, this is all kind of new to me. It wasn’t that long ago that television was very different than movies. And at this point, it’s the same. When we shoot these things, we shoot it like a movie. It’s movie actors, movie directors, movie cinematographers and more money than one has in the movies now. So the production values are extremely high. There’s more time.
I had been a great admirer of the French version of this, the initial version, Le Bureau, and when they came to me to talk about this, I thought, “Oh, OK,” because the series had been so good. My wife and I loved it. That’s one of our date shows. So I read it, but with some trepidation, too. How do you live up to that? The French show was so terrific.
I think the bringing in of Joe Wright to direct it was a great choice. He’s a wonderful film director. The cast as it was evolving was terrific. First rate. All people I admired. And the part itself, Bosko, starting to work my own ideas and how to make it interesting enough for me that I could sign on to this was an evolutionary process. They were extremely open to suggestions and direction in terms of building a character, and it was important for me that this character be multidimensional, be someone who was out in the field himself, was out in the cold, understood what these guys in the field are going through, understood a character like Martian. At the same time, had evolved himself to the point of being a very skillful manager of a huge office.
There is a kind of emotional distance between Bosko, Martian and Henry. You talked about not meeting Michael Fassbender and Jeffrey Wright before you began filming. Do you feel that enhanced your performance?
These are terrific actors. I had something else I was doing, and I came in late to the shooting, so we didn’t have time to bond with each other. It was bonding on the set with a camera in our face. So that first day was a little disconcerting for me. It probably was for them, too. But I think pretty quickly we’ve figured out what these relationships are and how their energies would work with my energy, and we made it work to the point where I think we have kind of a unique way of functioning with each other.
The world has changed so much since the original series debuted. How do you think the way this narrative is shaped makes it particularly resonate now?
These things have to be topical. They’ve got to be in our world. This movie — I keep calling it a movie — it’s what’s behind the scrim. It’s what’s behind the curtain of headlines. This is our world we live in, but this is actually the mechanism behind it. These are literally the gears moving behind the headlines and behind even the things that we don’t understand and we don’t know how to process. Hopefully this movie — I don’t know what to call it — this longform storytelling makes it personal, makes it visceral. This is about people. It’s not about glossing over geopolitical language or concepts, it’s about the mystery of who we are as human beings.
What was it like for you filming in London for an extended amount of time?
The way we worked it out, I said, “Look, I can’t do this unless we plug in. I work five or six days straight and then I go back to my family.” So I, essentially, was jetlagged on both ends. I would fly into London and be jetlagged for a week. And by the time I had finished work, I was on London time. I’d come back to New York, and then I’m jetlagged in New York for five days — or two weeks.
You recently spoke to Jimmy Kimmel about leaving the U.S. and spending more time in Madrid with your family. How are you feeling about that decision, particularly post-election as a lot of people are talking about possibly going abroad?
These are dark times and I think everyone’s trying to figure out, do you stay and try to figure out how to have an effect when everything is moving in what I perceive to be a very dark direction right now? How can you keep some light and be a force for good? We’re not leaving for political reasons. My wife is Spanish, and she deserves to have her family and her friends and her culture. And it’s good for our kids, who are bilingual, to have them live in Spain for a while. But I’m not going to disconnect from the social and political process in the U.S. I think it’s too important. We all have to stay plugged in.
You said you probably won’t watch this series because you hate watching yourself.
I’m taking my wife and my son [to the premiere]. We’ll see the first episode.
Are there other films or TV series of yours that fans would be surprised to know you’ve never seen?
The only other longform television that I did was MotherFatherSon, the BBC thing that I did and I never saw that either. Frankly, I’m more interested in the moment-to-moment creativity of what we’re trying to do, telling stories now, the challenges of every day, making a scene work, or the two scenes that we have time to do that day, making them right. Outside of that, it comes and goes. It doesn’t really matter that much. But the moment-to-moment reality of the real people… it’s important that we all feel good about this. That’s what we’ll take home.
***
The first two episodes of The Agency are now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime, with a linear premiere Sunday, Dec. 1, at 9 p.m. on Showtime. Episodes drop weekly, streaming Friday and on linear Sunday nights. Read THR’s premiere coverage and interview with Jodie Turner-Smith.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Sign up for THR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
