The Star Of ‘Night Agent’ Offers A Glimmer Of Hope In Hollywood

To be true to yourself and stand firm on your values takes courage. I would argue that this is especially true if your values are more based in nature — and even more so the case in the world of Hollywood.

When actors and actresses rise through the ranks of Hollywood, they often conform to the woke social and political image that Hollywood has not only deemed worthy but also silently required of celebrity status. Typically, if an actor’s beliefs aren’t aligned with Hollywood’s, they’ll either be cast out of that world or not even get a starting chance to climb the ranks. But a new actor rising to stardom is defying that preset narrative. Gabriel Basso upleveled to celebrity status after starring in the hit Netflix show “The Night Agent,” and during the 2024 election, he proved he’s not going to be a carbon copy of every other celebrity in the industry.

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Basso played JD Vance in the 2020 film “Hillbilly Elegy,” based on the book Vance wrote about his upbringing in rural Appalachia. The film was nominated for two Oscars, but this was before Vance ran as vice president. When Trump announced Vance as his running mate, everyone in Hollywood expected Basso to denounce having played Vance — but he didn’t. In fact, he called him a “cool dude” in an interview with Variety after the second season of “The Night Agent” was released. Variety said on Instagram that in their feature, “Basso opens up about starring in ‘The Night Agent,’ why he’s ‘not really a political person’ and playing JD Vance in 2020’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’”

Now, anytime someone says they are not political or don’t care to delve into politics, you can expect a large swath of people to swarm. Sure enough, the comments on Variety’s post proved as much, with some claiming privilege to be the key indicator as to why Basso doesn’t want to discuss politics. But connecting Basso to privilege is incredibly ironic because, as he makes quite clear in all his interviews, he intentionally avoids a privileged lifestyle. Variety writes of Basso:

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.”

Variety paints Basso as a very different kind of guy, honing in on what they seem to view as out-of-fashion characteristics. The interview reads as though a firm handshake is of a past time and maintaining eye contact is bizarrely uncommon. But these are just basic manners — a few of the exact ones my dad taught me growing up — yet Variety repeatedly mentions Basso’s eye contact and makes him seem like he’s some kind of anomaly.

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What is anomalous is Basso’s commentary; he’s saying what no other actor is saying. Take, for example, the interview he did with Good Morning America earlier this year. In it, Lara Spencer praised “The Night Agent” as an amazing, addictive show, drawing in staggering numbers of viewers.

Then, she asked Basso, “What do you think it is about your character, Peter, and the premise of the show that has caught on like this?”

And Basso responded, “An inherent distrust for government.”

An audible gasp ripped through the studio. That’s certainly not a statement you hear out of Hollywood, but it’s definitely a statement we all can relate to. With answers like that, he maintains a public-facing apolitical presence. While I don’t actually think he is apolitical, I do know he despises when actors talk as though they are experts in the political field, which he has made clear in other interviews. When Jamie Laing of Great Company asked Basso about his fame, he said:

I don’t believe that actors should be famous. We’re saying words that we’re told to say, we’re told how to say them, we’re told where to stand, and then we’re telling people how to vote? You should be quiet, you should do your job, you should be a jester, entertain people, then shut the f*** up. You know, we’re the court jesters. We’re there to perform a job, to entertain, and then all the sudden the jester, because he’s in the court room starts to be like, ‘I might want to go sit on the throne.’

He acknowledges the role of an actor and follows that up by acknowledging what evolves with celebrity status: The court jesters suddenly have the power of a king, and that shouldn’t be the case. He’s kept this same energy going on social media, like when he called out Instagram on his story for offering “overpaid actors” ways to “farm” their “audience for money” to then “morally lecture them about donating to causes that you are told to care about.” Then, he told people to buy seeds, chickens, or absolutely anything else. Last week, he deleted his Instagram entirely, a move he made in the middle of the most fame he’s ever experienced in his life.

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When he went on Late Night, he couldn’t have seemed less unimpressed by the fact he was sitting in the chair next to Jimmy Fallon. Fallon asked him about doing his own stunts, giving Basso a perfect opportunity to talk openly about his talents. (Let’s be real: It’s objectively cool he doesn’t have a stunt double.) Instead, Basso turned the answer to be about the audience, saying, “I enjoy acting. I don’t like lying. There’s just a difference. And for the sake of audience immersion, for the sake of believability, they like Peter, to watch him take hits, is important.” It’s a simple premise, but it caught Fallon totally off guard. That’s obviously not the kind of answer he’s used to getting from the seat reserved for actors who normally take every opportunity to boast about themselves. But that’s clearly not what Basso’s about. Much of the art of acting is being able to pretend and to deceive, and Basso likes acting, but he doesn’t want to lie if he doesn’t have to. It’s such a refreshing take.

Even though “The Night Agent” soared to number one on Netflix, Basso still thinks it’s important to have a day job. He shared with the hosts of This Morning that he has his DSWA walling license (as in, drystack walls) because he thinks “actors are insulated from reality in a lot of ways” — and he is intentionally choosing to actively engage in reality when we all know he really doesn’t have to. He’s been an actor since childhood, so he’s going out of his way to get these side jobs as his fame is increasing. He told This Morning, “There is something that I think is wrong in today’s day and age where I can retire at 30 years old. I don’t think I should be able to. I think that it’s my responsibility to work, as a man. You know, you get a trade, you become self-sufficient, and it feels wrong to go through life with people getting me water. It feels wrong. I’ll do that when I’m old and can’t get up from the couch.” Again, it’s just refreshing to see an actor who believes that as an actor, his place in society is to act — nothing more. That is why he sees the value in serving his community in other ways, not the value in just being served.

Basso is one of the exceptionally few actors whose mind has broken out of the Hollywood matrix, or perhaps it was never drawn into it in the first place. He will, of course, get pushback from people who want the jesters to entertain and tell us peasants what we should believe. But plenty of people are picking up on it and appreciating what Basso is doing — me being one. Americans at large are loving his takes, and I would love to see more of this same behavior from other actors. He appreciates the art of acting, but he isn’t obsessed with the popularity that comes with success. That’s precisely why I hope he has 10 times more success in the future and can serve as a lesson to Hollywood to bring more people like him into the industry.