The Agency: Michael Fassbender & Jeffrey Wright talk SPIES! Report by Mccallumj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Hard.
00:01Stretch.
00:02That's a stretch.
00:04Well, thankfully, there's, you know, clever writing.
00:07So it's just a matter of learning that.
00:10But yeah, I mean, it is definitely something for me.
00:12I mean, you're academically more intelligent than me, I would say, for sure.
00:18So that's covered for you.
00:21It's just, you know.
00:23I fake it.
00:24You do it so well.
00:26You're amazing.
00:27I think, you know, just working with the script for me, and that is a thing that I do go,
00:31okay, intelligent person, you know.
00:34I'll always sort of look at the sort of characteristics of some, you know, the person that I'm playing
00:39and go, okay, that one's covered.
00:41This one, you know, need to work on that.
00:43And it is an element of it for sure.
00:45Actors are expected to be able to fall into a fictional world and commit to it totally.
00:54But we're also required to be charming and to help communicate the intentions of the show,
01:00as we do now in promotion.
01:02And this is something that really surprised me doing research about CIA operatives,
01:08that one of the common traits is charm.
01:12That, you know, if you are trying to get people on board to potentially betray their countries,
01:20put themselves in dire situations, you have to be appealing and convincing.
01:28And so that pressure, the stakes of being believable whilst lying are as, you know,
01:34are the same as in show business, if not obviously more, because we're just playing at it,
01:40and that's real life or death situations for these people.
01:43You've met quite a few through your checkered past.
01:48I've, you know, I've known a couple.
01:52You talk about them being actors.
01:54One thing that I've found is that most of them have a tell, at least to my eye.
02:02And most of them, or many of them, I should say, and I haven't met like kind of, you know, rooms full,
02:07but a lot of them are just dying to tell you.
02:10That's what I've found, yeah.
02:12There's a vanity there, you know, a need to know.
02:15That's why I think they love reading the books, watching the shows.
02:18Yeah, yeah.
02:19Yeah, yeah.
02:20And you can just see.
02:21Because I would imagine, you know.
02:22I just want to tell you, I'm a spy.
02:24There's something about like the concept of living a double life that is exciting and enticing for people.
02:30I mean, many people, I mean, do it in their real lives as well.
02:33You know, there are people, I had a friend and she went to her dad's funeral and met his other family.
02:39Imagine, your whole life you think that your parents are one person and they're completely other.
02:46They have a whole other life, a whole other life.
02:49I mean, and some people get off on that.
02:54You know, this concept of, I feel like it's mostly men who do that.
02:59It's mostly men, honestly.
03:01I've yet to encounter that many women who have done something like that, just leading a double life.
03:06But, yeah, I think there's something that's so interesting.
03:08Also, I think people love the anxiety of it, you know, being on the edge of your seat.
03:12I've always loved this genre for that reason.
03:15That you're getting to be a fly on the wall in a room that even the people in this building, only a few of them can get inside.
03:21You know, the eye scanner that lets you into the lift or the ID that gets you into the crisis room.
03:28And only ten people out of these hundred can get in there, but you're there with them.
03:31I just, I don't know.
03:33I find all of that very intoxicating.