Sacha Baron Cohen's The Spy will premiere September 6th on Netflix. The streaming service also released the first images of the limited drama series, showing Baron Cohen as real-life Israeli spy Eli Cohen. The series is going to be a pretty big departure from Cohen's last series, Who is America?, which aired on Showtime last summer and saw him tackling the current political climate in North America. The Spy consists of 6 episodes and is not the first dramatic role the actor has taken on in his career.
The Spy was created by Gideon Raff and Max Perry. Raff also created the Israeli drama series Prisoners of War, which is the source material for Showtime's Homeland. The new Netflix series shows the life of Israel's top Mossad spy Eli Cohen in 1960s Syria. Eli Cohen's spy work has been labeled "game changing" many times over the years as he was able to befriend ambitious military leaders and their wealthy friends. He was able to expose Syria's secret anti-Israel activities.
Sacha Baron Cohen's take on Eli Cohen 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." This sounds like the perfect role for Sacha Baron Cohen to take on considering his past work in Borat, Bruno, and Who is America is almost like working as a spy. Baron Cohen has been able to infiltrate all kinds of surprising places by playing his outlandish characters, so taking on the role of Eli Cohen seems like it was almost meant to be.
The Spy also stars Noah Emmerich as Dan Peleg, who is described as "Eli's Mossad handler who tries to ease his own guilt over the sacrifices Eli makes." Hadar Ratzon Rotem plays Eli'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." Finally, Waleed Zuaiter plays Amin Al-Hafz, "a military officer who thinks he's found the perfect ally in the undercover Cohen." Ratzon Rotem also had a role in Homeland.
The limited series is a co-production between Canal+ and Netflix, with OCS airing the show in France, and Netflix streaming the The Spy internationally outside France. Each of the six episodes will be an hour long and they will all be available to stream on September 6th. As for now, it's unclear where the mysterious Sacha Baron Cohen will go next. The comedian/actor is usually pretty secretive about his projects, but it is believed he will stay away from the disguises for a while after having his cover blown during Who is America before the show debuted. You can check out the first images of Baron Cohen in The Spy below, thanks to Netflix streaming.
