Elisabeth Moss stars in gripping new espionage thriller The Veil
Deep in the Turkish mountains, with snow as far as the eye can see, an MI6 agent shows up to a refugee camp, looking to remove a woman who may be planning an attack that could result in the loss of thousands of lives — or perhaps she’s just a misunderstood mother, trying to get back to her daughter. As the two travel to France together, an unexpected relationship develops between agent Imogen Salter, played by The Handmaid’s Tale’s Elisabeth Moss, and her suspect Adilah, portrayed by Yumna Marwan — all while the world’s foremost intelligence agencies track their every move. Everyone believes they know what’s best, but can the CIA, the French DGSE and a wild card from MI6 truly work together to avert a potential international disaster?
In creating the international spy thriller The Veil, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight was inspired by a random encounter at a hotel bar between series exec producer Denise Di Novi and a drunken retired DGSE agent expressing his frustrations over friction between various intelligence agencies when dealing with new threats. “It seemed like very fertile area,” says Knight. “To research it, I met three people who worked in French intelligence and I asked them, ‘What are the stories?’ because I always find that the true stories are more compelling.” He weaved real-life tales into a thriller about two women on the run, and the men trying to keep up with them. “The thing that appeals to me most is when big, big, big international conflicts boil down to individuals,” he says. “I wanted to take huge issues and boil it down to two people in a car driving through the snow, where the nature of the conversation affects the outcome for thousands of people.”
Moss, who is also an executive producer on the series, jumped at the chance to play a spy. “An MI6 spy has an extra bit of glamour to it, which I was really excited about,” she says. “I did a lot of research beforehand; reading a lot of books. But the thing about spies is that they don’t necessarily want to talk to you about what they do, so I had to follow what Steve wrote and follow my instincts.” The Los Angeles native prepared by putting all her efforts into mastering a British accent and learning real fighting skills. “As far as the accent, I worked on it probably harder than I’ve ever worked on anything. There’s pressure when it comes to that kind of thing,” she says. “And I’ve done a fair amount of stunts in fight scenes before, but it’s usually on the defensive. What was really fun, and different about this for me, was that she’s a trained fighter. So, I did weeks and weeks of physical preparation.”
Action aside, the series is a two-hander between a pair of brilliant women who keep each other on their toes, from the beginning of the series until the very end. “What Steve did is create this beautiful map for Yumna and I to follow, these two women who were constantly trying to find out who the other person was and get to the humanity of this individual in front of them,” says Moss. Knight believes the key to the suspension was, indeed, to humanize both agent and potential terrorist. “I think if you watch and if you understand the character that Yumna plays, then there is something very familiar and very ‘us’ about all of this,” he says.
As an actress that often shape-shifts — from Australian detective Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake, secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson in Mad Men, and June Osbourne in The Handmaid’s Tale — Moss felt she had a deep understanding of her character in The Veil. “As soon as they say cut, I’m out, which I feel is very, very much in common with Imogen,” she says. “Steve and I, in our first conversation, were talking about how when Imogen’s playing a character, she’s not lying. She’s actually more truthful than she can ever be. I said, ‘So she’s an actress.’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘OK, got it.’ [Laughs.] That’s, for me, the big connection I have with her. She is able to play somebody and let them go and move on to play somebody else if she needs to, but she doesn’t ever feel like she’s lying or deceiving anybody. It’s an incredibly fascinating character. It’s like acting, times a hundred.” So captivating was Imogen to Moss that she and the creators are considering bringing the character back for round two. “This woman that Steve and Lizzie created, we’ve all fallen in love with her,” says Di Novi. “She’s such a fascinating person. Elisabeth Moss has given such dimension that we love her, and we miss her already.” Adds Moss: “There’s such an incredible arc to her throughout the season. To the last five minutes our finale, you just continue to discover more about this woman. I felt that we just scratched the surface of who she could be.”
The Veil, begins streaming Tuesday, April 30 on Disney+