‘I starred in Netflix smash viewed 98,000,000 times – it freaks me out’

One of Netflix’s biggest ever thrillers is back in action for season 2, two years after the series blew fans away and scored tens of millions of views.

However, the lead star has admitted that the extraordinary amount of time that people have spent watching it around the world ‘freaks him out’.

This week, The Night Agent is dropping brand new episodes following secret agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) as he heads into the field on an extremely dangerous mission for the FBI’s covert Night Action programme.

Metro spoke to Gabriel in London ahead of the launch of the second season, which will see Peter reunite with Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), the cybersecurity expert who he became romantically involved with in season one when they were on the run together.

When The Night Agent was first released in March 2023, it scored an incredible 98.2million views within its first 91 days, becoming the most-watched series of the year for the streaming giant.

So what’s it like for an actor to process that kind of information, and then go about trying to emulate that success – or surpass it – for a second season?

Gabriel Basso is back as FBI agent Peter Sutherland – and this time, his job at Night Action is taking him officially into the field (Picture: Christopher Saunders/Netflix)

Luciane Buchanan’s Rose is also making a return, after finding out in season one that her aunt and uncle were secretly Night Agents (Picture: Christopher Saunders/Netflix)

‘I try not to think about the first, the former, because I think time is a very valuable resource, and it freaks me out to see how easy… not that the show wasn’t good, but how easy it is for people to throw their time away on something,’ said Gabriel, 30, laughing softly.

‘I was talking to a buddy of mine who plays a lot of video games, and there’s this format on PC that logs how many hours you’ve played. I was looking through his PC, and I was like, “Dude, it’s so much time.”’

The Super 8 actor explained what it was like to analyse how much time audiences spent watching the first season of The Night Agent, after Netflix confirmed in 2023 that the show accumulated 812m hours viewed.

Drawing on an architectural analogy, Gabriel shared: ‘That’s like a cathedral, the cathedral plans that were built like four generations after the guy who drafted the plans died – that kind of stuff trips me out.’

Rose will use her cybersecurity skills once again as they face new dangers (Picture: Christopher Saunders/Netflix)

Brittany Snow joins the cast as a new character called Alice (Picture: Siviroon Srisuwan/Netflix)

Amanda Warren also joins as Catherine, who’s forced to remind Peter that she’s in charge (Picture: Christopher Saunders/Netflix)

He continued: ‘In terms of the pressure, there’s not really pressure on me to do a good job, because that’s always there. Anything I do, I try to do the best thing I can.

‘It’s motivating I think for the crew. It’s motivating to know on those brutal night shoots that it’s all going to a show that people are going to see. You’re not just pouring it all into a void.’

Speaking of those brutal night shoots, The Night Agent is bringing even more high-octane action in season two, as Peter is forced to go into hiding after an operation he was on goes wrong.

When asked what the most challenging aspect of making season two was, Gabriel answered that it was the ‘amount of time’ he spent on set.

‘Obviously I’m not going to complain, because it’s the show. but it wears on you, sprinting for hours, fighting for hours, and then going home and memorising 11, 14 pages, and then coming back and having to memorise new ones that next day, and then coming back and having a fight and having to learn choreography,’ he outlined.

‘It’s so much that it’s definitely like a test of your ability to focus. Obviously, people who do this kind of stuff in the real world have way more pressure on them, ramifications for getting it wrong.’

Peter is caught up in chaos when a mission goes wrong (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

Arienne Mandi plays Noor, who is working at the Iranian mission to the UN in New York while secretly trying to help her family in Iran (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

Noor works closely with Abbas (Navid Negahban), the Iranian ambassador to the UN, and Javad (Keon Alexander), the mission’s head of security (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

Gabriel added that the pressure also centres around the knowledge that members of the crew show up four hours before him, and stay four hours afterwards to clean up, which is why he tries to make sure he’s as prepared for his role as possible.

‘There’s just a level of respect there for them that I can’t not be professional,’ he stressed.

There were many reasons why The Night Agent became a roaring success when it premiered two years ago. In addition to the thrilling action, there was also the sizzling love story between Peter and Rose, complicated tales of treachery in the government and more.

When the cast and crew embarked on making season two, they didn’t simply return ‘knowing the show is a success, just add more explosions and call it a day’, he stated.

‘We’re definitely pushing the action practically. We’re not adding a lot of green screen stuff. I actually don’t think there was any green screen in season two,’ he shared.

‘We’re pushing the action. We’re pushing the characters that they’ve grown to care about in season one. We don’t just abandon what happened in season one and treat it like a new season.

‘Everything is continuing down the path that they’ve invested in, so they don’t have to feel like what they invested their time in in season one is a non-entity, is a non-issue, you know? But it’s rewarding.’

The Night Agent season 2 premieres on Thursday, January 23 on Netflix.

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