Fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn in A24's The Whale, Hong Chau continues to take Hollywood by storm with a new Netflix series that premieres March 23. Based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, The Night Agent is a gritty action-thriller centering on a low-level FBI Agent who works in the basement of the White House, manning a phone that never rings — until the night that it does. This propels him into a fast-moving and dangerous conspiracy that ultimately leads all the way to the Oval Office.

And that's where Chau's character comes into play as the female U.S. President's Chief of Staff — with secrets of her own. Chau has starred in numerous awards-caliber projects over the years, including The Menu, Watchmen, and Homecoming. On April 7, we'll see her co-star with Michelle Williams in yet another A24 film titled Showing Up. But for now, it's a treat seeing her in action in The Night Agent, donning silver hair and a handful of tricks up her sleeve.

Tackling a 'Multifaceted' Character

MW: You play such a cool character in The Night Agent. There's definitely more to her than what meets the eye. What was it about The Night Agent that first drew you to the project?

Hong Chau: I have never been invited to work in this genre before. I love thrillers, political thrillers, but I've never had an opportunity to be in one. So I was so excited that [series creator] Shawn Ryan reached out, and I was very familiar with Shawn Ryan's previous work with Terriers and The Shield. I was like, "Oh, Sean Ryan's doing a show. And he wants me to be a part of it. Yes. So of course, I will sign up for that. Absolutely." I also read the book. Before we started, even though our show veers from it quite a bit, I remember one of our early conversations, I asked Shawn why he was interested in doing the show and what he wanted to say specifically with it — other than, you know, entertaining people. His answer was really interesting to me — he said that he wanted to explore the different relationships and dynamics between men and women when they're working together in a professional setting, how they disagree, and how they get things done. That was something that I was also interested in.

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In our show, we have a female president. And that hasn't happened in real life yet. But it was really fun to get to imagine that and sort of to prepare ourselves for when that does happen. And [my character] Diane Farr is the President's Chief of Staff. And that means that she's the person who's out there doing the wheeling and dealing in order to get her agenda done. So there was a lot of different players in our story, and I really relied on our writers to sort of remind us what the stakes were, in any given scene... All of that stuff is really interesting for the audience to sort of try to figure out and keep track of. But it's really difficult for the actors because you're shooting out of sequence. You really have to know, "OK, at this point, does my character know this?" And you ask those types of questions on set. And so thankfully, they were there. I really enjoyed that, that piecing together of the puzzle.

And the character, you're right, she is very multifaceted. She's not an easy-to-nail-down woman. I think that's because it's difficult to say that anybody is good or bad on the show, you know? It's just a lot of people with a lot of different interests, and they're just trying to survive and trying to get things done. I think everybody on the show has a different shade of gray, you know?

Getting Opportunities Is a 'Group Effort'

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A24

MW: My wife and I loved seeing you recognized at this year's Oscars and now doing a big genre project like The Night Agent. What does it mean to you to be helping to represent the AAPI community in Hollywood?

Chau: I think it has to be a group effort. I can want and wish as much as I want to, you know? But it really takes people to hire me and to think creatively. I'm excited to get the invitation from Shawn Ryan to come and join his show. I think that he also did that in terms of people below the line as well — a lot of our writers, it was their first time stepping into that writer-producer position and to be staffed on a show like this. I think that sort of experience is absolutely necessary, but you need somebody to give you that experience and that opportunity. So I really appreciated that Shawn Ryan was really walking the walk and sort of being magnanimous, and as somebody who has had a lot of success and experience, to extend that goodwill to others who are really looking for bigger opportunities. Also, our two leads [Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan], they're really young. This show is like their first big show, and headlining it is really meaningful to them and their careers. So it was just a good group of people and a good situation for me to be a part of.

The Night Agent debuts on Netflix on March 23.