Sacha Baron Cohen plays a man with two identities in Netflix’s “The Spy”: Eli Cohen, the real-life Israeli Mossad agent; and Kamal Amin Sabet, the person he pretends to be while working on a years-long, undercover spy mission in Syria.
In the trailer, which you can watch above, the line between the two starts to blur for Cohen, who bears the weight of lying to his wife and children in order to help his country.
“We all have secrets,” Cohen says.
“When I first became Kamal it was just an act,” he continues. That was before the nightmares started happening. “Taking off the clothes doesn’t work anymore.”
Cohen’s character is described as “a man who wants nothing more than to be of service to his country, but he does his job so well that he finds it hard to strip off his double identity.” He is joined by co-star Noah Emmerich (“The Americans”) who plays Dan Peleg, “Eli’s Mossad handler who tries to ease his own guilt over the sacrifices Eli makes.” Hadar Ratzon Rotem (“Homeland”) portrays Cohen’s wife, Nadia, “who is left to raise their family on her own and knows something isn’t right about her husband’s government job,” and Waleed Zuaiter (“Colony”) plays Amin Al-Hafez, “a military officer who thinks he’s found the perfect ally in the undercover Cohen,” according to Netflix.
In six hour-long episodes, “The Spy” follows Cohen as he successfully goes undercover in early 1960s Syria and 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, according to Netflix.
Gideon Raff (“Homeland,” “Prisoners of War”) writes and directs, with Max Perry as a co-writer on episodes three through six. “The Spy” is produced by Alain Goldman (“La Vie en Rose”) and Légende Films.
“The Spy” premieres Sept. 6 on Netflix.