The Night Agent, a new Netflix original from the political spy thriller genre, has recently debuted on the streaming giant and garnered all sorts of attention. Still, fans are worried about its credibility, and all they can ask is, Is There A Night Agent?
This post will shed light on everything the fans might need to discover whether the story was true or fictional. An F.B.I. agent employed in the White House basement and is responsible for an emergency telephone that never answers is the subject of the 10-episode thriller show The Night Agent.
Until it finally does one day. Showrunner Shawn Ryan, best known for his skills on The Shield and S.W.A.T. decided to convert the Matthew Quirk novel into a television series. Shawn is said to have read the original book while in lockdown, which gave rise to the concept of the adaptation.
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What is the premise of A Night’s Agent?
The story “chronicles a low-level F.B.I. agent who spends his evenings guarding an empty phone line for undercover agents in the basement of the White House. But eventually, it does, sparking a series of events that reveal a plot that extends to the White House.
Shawn Ryan, the series maker, provided additional information to Netflix regarding the main character: “Peter doesn’t appear in the novel as some sort of unstoppable murdering machine superhero.” He has enormous training because he is an F.B.I. agent but not Jason Bourne.
He lacks assassination training. He is the underdog in this situation. He is the type of person whose bruises from fights last. He didn’t just recover instantly by some miracle.
Who will star in The Night Agent?
Gabriel Basso, who starred in The Kings of Summer, plays Peter Sutherland, a low-level F.B.I. officer employed in the White House’s underground rooms as the ensemble’s lead. His work has been quite peaceful thus far, but he is suddenly caught up in a highly risky conspiracy when the emergency line rings.
Diane Farr is portrayed by Oscar-nominated Hong Chau, who most recently appeared in The Whale and The Menu. Rose Larkin, a terrified layperson whom Peter must help and protect, is portrayed by Luciane Buchanan.
Enrique Murciano plays the chief of the Secret Service. At the same time, other actors include Fola Evans-Akingbola as a diligent Secret Service agent named Chelsea Arrington, Eve Harlow in the role of unpredictable criminal Ellen with extremely dangerous impulses, D.B. Woodside in the role of Secret Service agent Monks, and Eve Harlow in the role of Ellen.
Is There Really A Night Agent?
The fictional book of the same title by author Matthew Quirk served as the basis for The Night Agent. Although The Night Agent is a work of fiction, Matthew Quirk acknowledged in a 2019 Q&A with The Real Book Spy that some aspects of it are partly based on truth.
He said that after getting to know that his pal, who was employed during night shifts for the F.B.I., was given the task of being prepared to handle any emerging crises in the middle of the night and, if necessary, wake up the F.B.I. director, he was inspired to write The Night Agent.
This role parallels Peter Sutherland’s in the author’s story. Quirk claimed that he kept a close check on the news for occurrences that could help feed his big conspiracy narrative to help ground his fictional story and give it a sense of realism.
The real-life incident of Mikhail Lesin, a Russian oligarch and press minister in Vladimir Putin’s administration, who was discovered dead in a resort in Washington, D.C., in 2015, not far from where Quirk was residing at the time, served as one of the primary inspirations for The Night Agent.
In addition, the conspiracy theory surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the accompanying Mueller investigation fueled news headlines and gave Quirk more fodder to work with.
In the same way that the story of The Night Agent, which centers on the search for a Russian spy within the U.S. government, was clearly inspired by the case of Robert Hanssen, an undercover agent who spent more than 20 years working as a mole for Russian intelligence within the F.B.I.
So no, the night agent is not an actual individual on whom the story is based, but the author’s own experiences, which made him think about writing a thrilling story based on the experiences of his friends and the people he talked with.
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