‘The Night Agent’: Gabriel Basso Breaks Down Peter’s ‘Intense’ Scenes With Stephen Moyer (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Night Agent Season 3.]

“It’s the least amount of pressure he’s felt at the end of a season,” Gabriel Basso says of his Night Agent character.

Season 3 was, in the star’s mind, Peter’s first where he’s “very capable and good at being a night agent,” working off-the-books missions. His latest one involved a financial-based conspiracy that went all the way up to the presidency, saw him blackmailed by Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum) — who was just one shocking death — and ultimately sees the program needing to be scrubbed and agents reviewed. The corruption of those in power are exposed by journalist Isabel (Genesis Rodriguez), Peter survives, and he’s even considering taking more time off than he needs just to recover from his injuries. But he’s also eager to know more about this new partner of his he’d have going forward.

According to Basso, Peter just wants a competent partner. “This is the first season we’ve gotten to see Peter himself really become a night agent. Season 2, I think the writers still wanted him to sort of feel like relatable and out of his depth and what’s going on, what is this world? And I think a byproduct of that was Peter never really finding his footing,” he explains to TV Insider in the video interview above. “I think Season 3, Peter is very capable and good at being a night agent. And so I would hate to have to shepherd someone in Season 4 if there was one. I feel like it would be cool to have an equivalent almost of capability and conviction.”

Courtesy of Netflix

The standout episode of the season is easily the eighth, in which Stephen Moyer‘s character, an assassin known only as The Father, holds him hostage and injects him with a drug that acts like a truth serum. He’s trying to get the locations of Jacob, Isabel, and Jay (Suraj Sharma), a Treasury agent caught up in the conspiracy, but instead, it ends up being a deep dive into Peter: how he ended up in the FBI, how his job is all he has, how he had someone (Luciane Buchanan‘s Rose, not in this season) and he couldn’t make it work, and the burden he puts on himself, that he’s afraid of being seen as a failure. Executive producer Shawn Ryan told us that those scenes are the best acting work Basso has done on the show, and we agree.

“They were intense,” says Basso. “I remember asking Shawn, what motivates this guy beyond, ‘Oh, I’m trying to get to the bottom of my dad and I’m trying to protect Rose’? There has to be something deeper than that where he is willing to die for it. And I’ve always been wondering what that is, and we sort of hinted it with the mom, but I think there is stuff that’s really deeper than that in there that this drug sort of allowed to come to light a little bit, and that Moyer was allowed to pick at and find out. But it was great acting with him. A lot of our stuff is just him chasing me. So it was great to have a scene with him, and they had to strap me to a chair to keep Peter from moving.”

He adds, “I don’t think he’s planning on saying anything. I think he’s as honest as he can be in that moment.”

The “heartbreaking” part of those scenes, however, is that while it should feel like there’s a weight off of him for revealing what he does, those who are on this drug don’t remember what they share, according to Basso. “I don’t think he’s planning on saying anything,”

Also tragic? Catherine’s (Amanda Warren) death, which comes as Night Action has Peter continuing to play his role working for Monroe by bringing him Jay. But it wasn’t surprising to Peter.

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“I don’t want to say he saw it coming, but I think ultimately in this line of work, death is something the military adjacent, sort of intelligence community people are so used to as a reality that I don’t think that the death in and of itself is tragic,” Basso explains. “I think to him it’s more than his decision from Season 2, ultimately, is what led to it.”

Looking ahead, Peter and Isabel have a conversation near the end of The Night Agent Season 3 finale about finding balance. With him considering taking time off, could part of him, trying to find a balance, be going to find Rose? Basso isn’t so sure.

“I think Peter is the kind of person that wants to be useful, and if he feels like Rose is in a better place without him, then I don’t think he would,” he says. “He definitely still has love for her, and I think he does want to stay in contact with her, but not if it’s to her detriment.”

Watch the full video interview above with Gabriel Basso for a breakdown of The Night Agent Season 3, including where it leaves Peter, what’s next, and more.

The Night Agent, Seasons 1-3, Streaming Now, Netflix