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I’m a big fan of The Night Agent series, which was one of Netflix’s biggest hits in 2023. It stars Gabriel Basso, 30, as a young FBI agent stuck in the middle of a conspiracy he can only escape with careful strategic alliances, his instinct and reflexes. He’s a handsome all-American midwestern man and he’s confident yet vulnerable. There’s something generic about him though, like a Temu Matt Damon as Jason Bourne.
Basso has a new interview with Variety to promote season two of The Night Agent, out now. I didn’t realize that he played JD Vance in the film based on Vance’s BS memoirs, Hillbilly Elegy. In this interview, Basso calls Vance a “cool guy” based on his brief interactions with him, but he clarifies that he’s “not a political person” and that we shouldn’t even have a federal government because it’s illegitimate or something. It is now, but I doubt that’s what he means. Here are some excerpts from that interview, with more at the source.
The Night Agent’s showrunner Shawn Ryan on Basso’s work ethic
And yet. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first thing he did after Season 1 finished filming was go to Tennessee and get a stonemason’s license,” says Ryan, Basso’s “Night Agent” boss. “Other actors would have been dialing their publicist. He likes to do the work more than talk about the work.” Ryan also tells me, “I’ll be curious how your interview goes with him, because I don’t think talking to the press is his favorite thing to do.”
Basso isn’t sure he’ll continue acting
Basso actually doesn’t mind doing press, he says. “I’ve not compromised morals or principles to be here, so I’m doing a good thing.” With that said, though, he hopes not to have to take part in the entertainment-industry circus for too much longer. “Right now, I’m doing acting to the best of my ability,” Basso says. “But at the same time, I don’t feel like a productive part of society. If I build a stone wall — that’s a thing. I’ve served the community. I think there’s more important things that a 30-year-old man can do with his life.”
He’s “not a political person”
Basso, leaning upright against a wall in our coffeeshop booth with his legs outstretched, tells me that he’s “not really a political person,” but quickly adds, “I think our form of government is illegitimate. It’s never supposed to have been a federal government. That’s not what we started as — but everything is federal now.”
On playing JD Vance
Glenn Close, who was Oscar-nominated for playing Vance’s grandmother in “Hillbilly Elegy,” has criticized the politician. But Basso sidesteps the question of the new V.P.’s beliefs. “It’s kind of weird to be included in that timeline,” he says. “When he’s thinking about his life — they made a movie of his book, and my name will always be in the description.” The two men spoke before the film was shot. “We talked a little bit. He’s a cool dude. We’re both from the Midwest. We just talked about life — about growing up in the woods.”
He wants to do something other than acting
And Basso says he’s serious. When? In five or 10 years? “It’ll be sooner than that,” he says. “The monopoly of youth is energy, and I think that I have to convert that into service in order to be legitimate as a person.”
He doesn’t carry a cell phone
There’s something fundamentally paleo about Basso, from his out-of-another-era firm handshake to his not carrying a cellphone. (His publicist and I text one another to triangulate his location as he arrives.) “I’m a medieval peasant,” he says. “I reject what I see in society. If a guy was to come into my village and peddle these black mirrors that everyone stares into all day, I’m trying to get this guy out of my village.”
He dislikes the impact of film and television
“it’s wrong that a company can morally educate people after dropping $300 million on a movie. Scrap the movie! Give it to the society that built your studio because COVID shut down all the mom-and-pop shops.”
“If all actors were to die tomorrow,” he says, “society would continue. This business is not important in the scheme of society.” I expect him to pause, but he barrels on. “Storytelling is important, but some kid has a grandfather reading. They don’t need me to tell stories.”
Basso sounds like a college student who just read The Fountainhead and thinks he has the answers, but it’s too complicated to explain and you really wouldn’t understand. He’s Libertarian-adjacent but his political beliefs can’t be defined because they’re not fully formed yet. At least he sounds earnest about it. It’s impressive that he went to school to become a mason, that’s admirable. It reminds me of Anthony Mackie, who was running a home restoration business in New Orleans years ago (I don’t know how active he is in it now) in between Marvel and scifi gigs. Mackie also goes long stretches of time without his phone. Unlike Basso, Mackie doesn’t put down the industry or complain about its influence, he just likes to work with his hands and not be famous in his down time. You don’t need to trash film and television to distance yourself from the parts you don’t like about it. I bet Basso’s character in The Night Agent, Peter Sutherland, feels similarly about his career.
Photos credit: Lacey Terrell/Netflix, Getty Images for Netflix, Christopher Saunders/Netflix
