Michael Fassbenderdetails the most challenging scene for him to film in his new movie. TheX-Menactor, best known for playing Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, in20th Century Fox’sX-Mensaga,has a diverse career outside of superhero movies. He portrayed Bobby Sands in the historical dramaHunger, and has starred in Ridley Scott’sPrometheusandAlien: Covenant.In the comedy space, Fassbender left a memorable performance as a coach of the American Samoa soccer team inNext Goal Wins.
In recent years,Fassbender has been deep in the thriller/spy genre. Following his journey portraying an assassin inDavid Fincher’s 2023 filmThe Killer, the actor starred in the 2024 Paramount+/Showtime spy seriesThe Agency, where he plays thecovert CIA agent Martian, who struggles to cut ties with an old flame after his mission has come to an end. Fassbender’s new 2025 film further sees him in a muddy situation between heart and duty.
Michael Fassbender Reveals Why He Panicked During The Polygraph Scene In Black Bag
Fassbender’s Character Tasked With Interviewing His Colleagues
Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, the tense spy dramaBlack Bagcenters around a British intelligence agent, George Woodhouse (Fassbender), whose skill at sniffing out liars is put to the test to find out whether his spouse, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) has betrayed her country and marriage. After arriving in theaters on March 14, the critically acclaimed movie iscurrently Fassbender’s highest-rated filmon Rotten Tomatoes.
After Black Bag, Watch This 2011 Michael Fassbender Spy Thriller With 80% On Rotten Tomatoes That’s Streaming On Prime Video
Michael Fassbender is starring in a Steven Soderbergh movie for the first time since 2011, with their last movie, another spy thriller on Prime Video.
In an interview withEntertainment Weekly, Fassbender details the intense polygraph scene that was a challenge to film. The star explains that he learned the scene the way Koepp wrote it, which is what happens in the film as George interrogates all of his colleagues. However, on the day of filming the sequence, Soderbergh wanted to captureall the characters' individual coverage at once. Check out what Fassbender said below:
That was definitely the most challenging scene for me because in the script, it jumps between the characters as it’s written dialogue-wise. So that’s the way I learned it. But then on the day Steven was like, “You’re just going to do all of Clarissa’s dialogue in one, and you’re going to do all of Stokes and all of Freddie.” I hadn’t learned it that way, and I’m asking quite similar questions to each of the characters. But there’s subtle differences there. I was panicking. I had the pages all over the place in front of me.
It didn’t matter because the camera’s hardly on me anyway. I wish he’d told me that, but yeah, I was panicking a little bit that day.
Soderbergh explains that his method of filming worked in terms of efficiency, stressing thatthe polygraph methodis actually being used by intelligence agencies. He further explains that the scene is based on real-life polygraph processes, which he happens to have insider knowledge of. Check out his comment below:
It makes perfect sense if you’re on a normal movie to memorize the script as written.
It just turned out in order to do this most efficiently, everybody had to be shot from these four different angles. I would set up two of them at a time and just rotate them in and out. And as soon as I explained that to Michael, he went, ‘Oh s—.’ He had to scramble his brain and get that sorted out. The intelligence agencies still use it a lot. The metrics they’re using are pretty precise. We had a guy who does this for those kinds of agencies, and he felt very, very confident in his ability to judge whether somebody is lying. He’s like, “Look, can it be beaten? Yes, but I can tell you it’s really f—ing hard.” You’ve got to be a sort of sociopath to really fool it because they’re collecting all this data — there’s a hand thing, heart rate, blood pressure, pupil dilation, it’s full on.
I shot all them out first, and then I came and shot Michael, and then, he got to do the version of it that he had memorized. So it all worked out, but there was a little minute of, “Wait, what are you doing?”
Our Take On Black Bag And The Polygraph Scene
Black Bag Might Be More Realistic Than Fans Would Think
ThoughBlack Bagisn’t based on any real-life events, Koepp, who also penned the script for the originalMission: Impossiblemovie, has extensive knowledge of real-world intelligence. The screenwriter has previously opened up aboutinterviewing intelligence operatives forrealistic portrayalsof related scenes in movies. Soderbergh’s comments add another layer of realism toBlack Bag’s world-building.
Instead of blindly following traditional spy tropes,the highly ratedBlack Bagdelves into intricate and complicated relationships and explores the nature of trust. The polygraph scene isone of the instances where George has to question those around him. For the most part, Fassbender isn’t shown within the polygraph scene. He acts as the operator who asks questions, and as the character taking the test changes, his voice is the only constant, remaining detached and emotionless. It makes sense that the actor panicked during filming when the plan was changed at the last minute. However, his performance is still excellent.
