Gabriel Basso prefers to do his own stunts whenever possible.
“I think that can kind of get misconstrued into the world of like, I do it because I want to say I can do it, and it’s really not about that,” The Night Agent star, 30, said during a Tuesday, January 14, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “To me it’s about audience immersion.”
Basso stars in the Netflix series as FBI agent Peter Sutherland, who works in the White House as a Night Action telephone operator. He told Fallon, 50, that when the audience watches The Night Agent, he wants them to feel that his performance is believable.
“I don’t want the audiences watching the show, and then right as I’m about to get hit or hip tossed or thrown on my back, you know. I feel like it’s a lie,” the actor said. “I enjoy acting, I don’t like lying.”
For Basso, he views it as there’s a “difference” when it comes to executing stunts for the “sake of the audience immersion” and “the sake of believability.”
“They like Peter [and] to watch him take hits is important, I feel like,” he explained. “And if that requires me to get tossed into a wall, then fine. It’s not the end of the world.”
One stunt that was on the table for Basso was skydiving — which he already does in his personal life.
“[Netflix] brought it up as an idea and then I was like, ‘Oh I already skydive. I’ll do it,’” Basso said. “But then insurance called and was like, ‘Yeah stop it.’”
Fallon then showed a photo of Basso skydiving.
“I went down to Skydive San Diego,” Basso explained of the photo of him soaring in the air. “I got my A-Class recertified”
The late night host then realized he was holding the photo of Basso in the air upside down. Basso quipped the photo of him in the sky “looked cooler the other way” as his back was seemingly facing the ground.
“I like that. That’s hard to do,” Fallon teased before re-enacting the pose in his chair. “You really gotta arch your back.”
Last month, Basso made an epic jump out of Netflix’s blimp during the Christmas Day football game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texas. Basso parachuted out of the blimp in Houston. After completing the stunt, he subsequently revealed that the season 2 trailer for The Night Agent dropped.
“It was cool to see Houston from a blimp. Definitely a memory!” Basso said to Netflix’s Tudum in December 2024.
The Night Agent season 2 premieres on Netflix on Thursday, January 23.
