Inside spy movie Black Bag

Black Bag, the spy drama from Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh, (Magic Mike XXL, Mosaic) and writer David Koepp (Death Becomes Her) is a twisted tale of love, marriage, and dangerous dinner parties.

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender, 300) ‒ an elite operative at Britain’s closely guarded National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) under section head Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia! and MobLand, on Showmax from Wednesday, 15 October) ‒  has only one weakness: his unwavering devotion to his wife, Kathryn St Jean (Cate Blanchett, Ocean’s Eight, The Lord of the Rings), one of NCSC’s most powerful and trusted agents.

Assigned the sensitive and urgent task of ferreting out a mole in the agency, George is given a list of five suspects. Four are friends and colleagues at NCSC. The fifth is Kathryn. Will his loyalty be to his marriage or his country? We’ll find out as George throws a dinner party with a rather select guest list … and a little something extra in the drinks.

Read on as Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp dig deeper into Black Bag, we share 10 top-secret facts from the movie, and we give spy story fans 10 movies and series to watch next.

Spies, lies and true love

The idea for Black Bag first came to writer David Koepp while he was interviewing intelligence operatives as part of his background research for the first Mission: Impossible film. “All the spycraft stuff was very cool, but I learned more than I ever expected about the people,” he says. “One woman told me that her job made it impossible for her to sustain a relationship. A line in the movie was inspired by my conversations with her. ‘When you can lie about everything, how do you tell the truth about anything?’”

“The source of most conflict in the world is somebody feeling that a trust has been broken,” says Steven. “In this situation, both main characters hold a get-out-of-jail-free card because not only are they not obligated to share everything, in some cases they are forbidden to.” 

The centre of the conspiracy that George has been asked to investigate is Severus, a piece of malware with the ability to completely destabilise a nuclear facility. “Severus functions as an inciting incident, but more importantly, it’s a way to talk about what you do if you think your spouse is violating the unspoken agreement that you made with each other,” says Steven.

George and Kathryn 

Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse

The secret to George and Kathryn’s marriage is quite simple, according to David Koepp. “It’s very corny, but they truly love each other,” he explains. “It doesn’t hurt that they are also quite physically attracted to each other, and maybe most crucially, they are the only ones who understand each other. They both say that they will do anything to protect each other. Who wouldn’t want that?”

Steven Soderbergh believes that it’s not just love that holds them together. They also genuinely like each other. “Over time, that might be more important,” he believes. “The scenes that they have alone together don’t take up a gigantic portion of the film. But you get a full portrait of a relationship because all the scenes, no matter who’s in them, are ultimately about George and Kathryn’s marriage.”

“Kathryn is his life,” adds Michael Fassbender. “She has a social ease that he lacks, and like him is remarkably intelligent. She is also very commanding. His purpose is to serve her and to protect her.” 

One note from the script gave Michael a key to understanding their dynamic. “It said Kathryn is the head of the table, wherever she sits,” he reveals, “But Cate also brings something that I didn’t see on the page. There’s a lot of ambiguity in her performance. Kathryn has built a sturdy exterior wall even for George, but there is vulnerability within her as well.”

Cate adds, “The marriage was something I had not seen before. George and Kathryn would literally kill for each other, which is a good premise for a movie, particularly one dealing with spies…Her marriage is the one thing she holds sacrosanct. The thrill of the job and the deep trust that they have in one another is their life’s work.” 

Despite her devotion, though, Kathryn is an enigma, even to George. “She’s self-possessed and an incredible observer of people. She takes no prisoners and shares no confidences,” reveals Cate. “There are certain things that they just don’t need to discuss, which is a useful thing for them. I suppose they are both very damaged goods, but perhaps many people who go into the espionage game are damaged. They have nothing to lose.” 

The guest list

The key to George’s mole-hunting plan is to invite all the suspects to dinner at his house. “He sets up a kind of truth or dare game for the guests,” says Michael Fassbender. “His attention is on everyone except Kathryn. The information he gets is not necessarily directly related to Severus but is quite revealing in terms of their relationships.”

The suspects are…

1. Satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela, Back to Black, Industry), whose past affairs wind up on the menu during dinner.

2. Clarissa’s boyfriend and case officer, Freddie (Tom Burke, Praetorian Jack in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga). Freddie’s messy personal life and drinking problems have undermined a once-promising career, and recently cost him a promotion.

3. Counterintelligence officer James (Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton) is as arrogant as he is intelligent, and probably incapable of feeling real love.

4. James’s girlfriend, NCSC staff psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris, The Third Day, The Wasp), is fully aware of his issues. “Kathryn suggests that Zoe is just nosy, which really nails her. She’s drawn to the sexiness of intelligence work and hearing all the stuff she’s not supposed to know,” hints writer David Koepp.

David concludes, “I’d love people to come out of this movie wondering if the spy world really is like this. I have reason to believe that it is. Anybody who has ever worked in a group situation knows that the personal lives of the people involved will bleed all over it. Then of course we all will want to talk about things like who’s sleeping with whom.” 

10 top-secret Black Bag facts

1. Severus is based on existing technology. “Perhaps most famously, a worm called Stuxnet was introduced into Iranian nuclear reactors and caused some of their components to fail,” reveals David Koepp.

2. Some cast members, including Michael Fassbender, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Pierce Brosnan and Regé-Jean Page, met with real-life GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and NCSC operatives. Cate Blanchett tried to source her own intelligence officer, but admits. “I suppose if I could find one, she probably wouldn’t be doing her job very well.”

4. Production designer Philip Messina took eight weeks to build George and Kathryn’s London house on a soundstage at Pinewood Studios, and gave it an open plan design to hint that it was a home in which it’s hard to keep secrets.

5. The real-life NCSC allowed production staff to tour their offices, but they weren't allowed to take photographs. Black Bag’s NCSC consultant gave Philip Messina some of his own things to use as props, including his coffee mug and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) history manual. 

6. Makeup and hair designer Frances Hounsom gave Pierce Brosnan a little something extra. “I created a prosthetic nose design for him, which subtly altered his appearance,” she reveals.

7. Marisa Abela’s makeup contains a nod to Clarissa’s profession. “She has two little dots on her nails, which was Morse code- inspired,” reveals Frances.

8. Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick borrowed Kathryn’s signature pieces, the Chemena Kamali-designed leather jacket and culottes, as well as a trench coat, from the French luxury fashion house Chloé.

9. Michael Fassbender’s style as George was inspired by actor Michael Caine’s wardrobe during the 1970s. “George is a meticulous and calculating perfectionist. His wardrobe is from Dunhill clothier and the tailoring is that of an English gentleman, but never stodgy,” explains Ellen. 

David Koepp borrowed a detail for George from CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton: his passion for fishing. Michael Fassbender explains, “It tells us so much about the character. It’s the solitude and the rituals that are important. George is a very patient character. He watches, always assimilating information and waiting for the right moment to strike.” 

10. With his six guests assembled, director Steven Soderbergh removed the centre of the dining table so he could shoot the actors from that viewpoint. “It allowed him to shoot people from a very particular, paranoid angle,” reveals Cate Blanchett. “He chose to shoot my character through George’s gaze right from the beginning. I was able to play into that and then try to subvert that as it went along.” 

10 cloak and dagger series and movies to watch next

1. The Sympathizer

Spy drama series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer. The story follows a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy known as The Captain (Hoa Xuande) during the final days of the Vietnam War and into his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles, where he works as a mole for the CIA under recruiter Agent Claude, played by Robert Downey Jr, who also appears as the Captain’s grad school mentor – history Professor Robert Hammer – politician Ned Godwin, filmmaker Niko Damianos and the priest who councils the Captain.

2. The Day of the Jackall

The world’s most devious assassin-for-hire – the Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) – meets Britian’s most determined intelligence agent – Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch) – in this nail-biting, globetrotting action-drama series based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 political thriller novel. 

Normally if he got wind of people on his tail, the Jackal would pull a disappearing trick. But the $100 million price tag on his latest target – tech entrepreneur Ulle Dag Charles (Khalid Abdalla) – is too good to pass up. Bianca will never get a better chance to catch the Jackal than now. And more than one life is on the line as they try to unmask, outwit and destroy one another. 

3. Jason Bourne

This hard-hitting series of spy action films, starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, is based on the character and conspiracies created by author Robert Ludlum in his Bourne books (aside from Legacy, which focuses on Jeremy Renner’s agent/assassin character, Aaron Cross). After an accident destroys his memory, Jason has to uncover the truth about who trained him as an assassin, while dodging death daily because his existence threatens powerful government officials.

4. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me & Austin Powers in Goldmember

Comedian Mike Myers plays British Intelligence agent Austin Powers, who was frozen in swinging 1960s London, and brought back to life in the late 1990s and early 2000s to take on his old nemesis, Dr Evil (also Mike Myers). Thanks to this perfect spoof of the Roger Moore and Sean Connery-era Bond films, and the Bourne movies, the 007 films had to get a complete reboot.

5. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Chris Pine plays author Tom Clancy’s most famous spy character in this action movie directed by Kenneth Branagh. The film fills in some of Jack Ryan’s back story, before taking us into his “boring” undercover CIA job on Wall Street, where he’s able to track the financial end of Russian politics and election fraud as an auditor.

6. The Equalizer Season 1-5

“If there is anybody who can help, it’s McCall”. You say it, she slays it: Queen Latifah plays ex-CIA operative Robyn McCall, who helps victims who can’t call 911, or have to dodge the cops to avoid more trouble. Based on the Denzel Washington Equalizer films.

7. Special Ops: Lioness

Senior CIA operative Kaitlyn Meade (series co-producer Nicole Kidman, who teamed up with Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan to create the series) – heads up the Lioness programme, which assigns female operatives to go undercover on missions in the United States’ “War on Terror”. Kaitlyn’s Head of Operations, Joe (Zoe Saldaña), recruits and trains women like Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira) to infiltrate global terrorist organisations like ISIS in areas where, as women, their presence will be dismissed as irrelevant. 

8. Jack Reacher, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, and Jack Reacher: Shadow Recruit (on Showmax from Tuesday, 7 October)

The Tom Cruise Jack Reacher action films, which centres on a tough vagrant and his mission to solve crimes and dish out street justice, are inspired by the book series and characters created by novelist Lee Childs. Jack is a former US Army Major MP investigator who’s gone off the grid. In the first film, Jack investigates the framing of an ex-US Army sniper and war criminal for a crime he didn’t commit (this time). And in Never Go Back, Jack goes on the run with Army major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) who’s been framed for espionage.

9. Mission: Impossible;  Mission: Impossible 2;  Mission: Impossible III; Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol;  Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation; Mission: Impossible – Fallout

In the first MI film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) goes on the run as he tries to find out who framed him when he is accused of murdering his Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team during a mission in Prague, and of selling government secrets to a mysterious arms dealer. Every mission after that sees Ethan and the IMF team pulling off increasingly dangerous and seemingly impossible spy stunts. Trying to figure out which Mission is which? Read our handy guide!

10. Atomic Blonde

Stylish spy action drama based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, so enjoy the visuals. In 1989, days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a KGB agent steals a microfilm that lists every double agent active in Berlin. MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is sent to recover the list before the KGB can capture her fellow spies, and to find the KGB double agent codenamed Satchel who’s working in MI6 Berlin station, under maverick MI6 Berlin station chief David Percival (James McAvoy), an absolute shambles of a human being with a “street tough” London accent, who fits right in with Berlin’s grimier elements. 

For more undercover action, also watch: Miss Congeniality & Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; Men in Black; Men In Black II, Men In Black 3; The Cleaning Lady Season 1-4; C.I.Ape; Blacklight; Trackers; Strike Back Season 1-7; and Alex Rider Season 1-3.