Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is getting dramatic in the full trailer for the upcoming Netflix series The Spy. The series is a major shift for Cohen, who was last seen on television pranking right-wing politicians and more in Showtime’s Who Is America?, which showcased the actor’s chameleonic gifts and ability to never break character. Though he’s most well known for that brand of comedy, including films such as Borat and Bruno, Cohen has drifted into more dramatic territory before, particularly in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.
While it’s not unusual for Cohen to play things on the more dramatic side, The Spy puts the funnyman front and center in a twisty espionage story based on real-life account of Mossad agent Eli Cohen. The series hails from Gideon Raff, who recently directed the Chris Evans Netflix film The Red Sea Diving Resort and helped usher in Showtime’s Emmy-winning Homeland, which was adapted from his series Prisoners of War. As such, it seems as though Raff is operating in familiar territory, and he’s decided to bring Cohen along for the ride.
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From what’s seen in the full trailer, it would seem as though Raff made the right choice teaming with the guy who played Borat. Cohen slips easily into the dual role of Eli Cohen and his fictional counterpart he creates in service of his country. And while the series is filled with many elements familiar to the espionage format, the central conflict of The Spy appears to be Eli’s struggles to maintain both aspects of his life. Check out the full trailer for The Spy, along with its poster and brief synopsis below:
Raff has quite a record when it comes to delivering buzzy dramatic content, and this looks to be in keeping with his past work. The real draw here, though, will be seeing Cohen as the lead in a heavy dramatic role, one that finds him opposite Noah Emmerich, a guy who knows a thing or two about espionage on TV after six seasons on FX’s The Americans. If nothing else, though, The Spy may prove to be an interesting glimpse into the next phase of Cohen’s career.
“THE SPY is inspired by the real-life story of former Mossad agent, Eli Cohen, who successfully goes undercover in Syria in the early 1960s. Cohen becomes close enough to ambitious military leaders and their rich friends to earn a game-changing level of trust about Syria’s biggest anti-Israel secret initiatives.”
The Spy will stream exclusively on Netflix beginning Friday, September 6.
