Posted in: Netflix, TV | Tagged: Arienne Mandi, netflix, The Night Agent

The Night Agent: Mandi on Series Embracing Her Iranian Background

Arienne Mandi (The L Word: Generation Q) spoke with us about joining Netflix's The Night Agent, Shawn Ryan, her Iranian heritage, and more.

Season two offered a dramatic shift from Gabriel Basso's FBI Agent Peter Sutherland and Luciane Buchanan's cybersecurity expert Rose Larkin's journey to unravel a government conspiracy from within the U.S. government to the grander global focus with the introduction of Iranian nationals seeking asylum. Among them is Noor Taheri, a New York-based aide to Iranian Ambassador to the UN Abbas Mansuri (Navid Negahban), played by Arienne Mandi (The L Word: Generation Q). The actress spoke to Bleeding Cool about the rare opportunity to use her Iranian background to help bring authenticity to the role, working with creator Shawn Ryan, thoughts on the original Matthew Quick novel, and physical challenges on set.

The Night Agent Star Arienne Mandi on Joining the Netflix Series in Season Two

Bleeding Cool: When you were cast in season two of 'The Night Agent,' what intrigued you about the series? Were you already familiar with the Matthew Quirk novel?

Yes, I was familiar with the novel and the show's first season was such a sensation worldwide. I was excited by the action and suspense it gave the audience. I breezed and binged the hell out of it and was excited to join season two as part of the Iranian cast because, one, I am of Iranian descent. That was exciting for me to tap into that culture and get to speak the language for most of the season, which is cool because a lot of shows don't do that fully. Understanding Noor's plight and her journey over the course of the second season and reading that I was given the scripts was like, "This is such a dream for an actor!" They wrote about this character, and I was excited to live in that.

What's it like working with Shawn and the diverse creative staff?

My gosh! Shawn Ryan is one of the most generous and genuine, down-to-earth people I've ever met. He was excited about the Iranian storyline, as well as myself. The writers and producers, like Munis [Rashid], were concerned and excited about bringing justice to the truth of Iranian culture, fact-checking everything, and making sure we got the nuance of the day-to-day culture and the language. They were attentive and collaborative in that sense. It was honestly an awesome collaborative process all around from start to finish, from episode to episode. It was exciting.

Did you encounter anything challenging on the production side of things, or perhaps a cultural roadblock?

Being the show that it is, lots of covert business is happening. For Noor specifically, there are a lot of moments where she finds herself in tight and confined spaces where she's undercover, doing different sorts of things. There were many scenes we filmed, like the location of the old brewery. It's an old building they had left intact now for filming and other purposes. It was like two stories underground and like this concrete, musty building. We shot there for at least like, two weeks. That was definitely a challenge.

As usual, we all prevailed, and as far as any other challenges, hats off to the whole stunt team on the show and to Gabriel because they crushed all of those stunts; watching them do the choreography was such a treat because they were very particular about it, and very meticulous and just really gave so much attention to every little detail and all the fight scenes and watching. It was just like out of this world.

The second season of The Night Agent, which also stars Louis Herthum, Berto Colon, Keon Alexander, Michael Malarkey, Amanda Warren, Teddy Sears, Albert Jones, Marjan Neshat, Anousha, Rob Heaps, Elise Kibler, Marwan Kenzari, Dikran Tulaine, and Kiarash Amani is available on Netflix – with a third season underway.

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