Overnight sensations usually gain followers. Gabriel Basso deleted all of his.
“You get hit with these algorithmic waves,” says the 31-year-old star of The Night Agent, the Netflix thriller about an FBI agent who stumbles into a web of government conspiracies. “But I never felt like [social media] added anything to my life. I felt like it either stressed me out or I felt like I wasn’t doing something I should be doing.”
So, Basso erased his entire digital footprint and hasn’t looked back since. “What’s the benefit of having this, other than the illusion of being connected?” he says. “If I’m only being pumped with cortisol and stress because of shit that’s going on all around the world, it feels like sort of a net loss for me.”
Basso, who lives in South Carolina when he’s not working in Hollywood, was born in St. Louis and still carries a Midwestern sensibility, accent included. When he was 14, he and the family moved to Los Angeles so his sisters could pursue acting careers (Annalise is best known for her role on TNT’s Snowpiercer, and Alexandria has appeared in such projects as Alice Upside Down). But Gabriel fell into the business as well.
At 16, he landed a recurring role as Laura Linney’s son on Showtime’s The Big C and appeared in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8. They were solid, visible credits, enough to keep doors open, if not enough to turn him into a name. What followed was a long stretch of steady roles — including, in one memorable turn, as future vice president J.D. Vance in Ron Howard’s 2020 adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, a part he has no regrets in taking. “It’s a wild historical thing that I’ve now done,” he’s said. “It’s a wild feeling.”
But then, in 2023, The Night Agent dropped. The show surged to No. 1 during its first weekend on Netflix, racking up 168.2 million viewing hours in its first four days. A second-season renewal followed almost immediately. For Basso, it obviously marked a sharp shift in visibility — he suddenly found himself chatting with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.
Other doors opened quickly. He starred opposite Nicholas Hoult in Clint Eastwood’s Juror No. 2 and joined Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite ensemble after the director binged The Night Agent. Basso also began developing Iconoclast, his screenwriting and directorial debut that recently wrapped shooting in Utah. It’ll be a dark tale about a young man’s obsession with an influencer — it’s being touted as Taxi Driver for the digital age — in which he’ll star alongside Courtney Eaton and Noah Centineo.
On The Night Agent, he pushed to do the show’s stunt work himself — not as a flex, but as a matter of principle. “You don’t get to eat the best food, sleep in the most comfortable beds and make a million dollars and then when it comes time to get hit by a guy, say, ‘No, that could hurt,’ ” he explains. “You’re paid a lot of money — there should be a feeling of being beholden to the audience. I’m obligated to risk my life for something sick that could live forever on camera. It’s like the quote from Spider-Man: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ “
The Night Agent’s third season is set to premiere Feb. 19, with Basso leading an almost entirely new cast following the departure of co-star Luciane Buchanan. It’s more pressure and bigger stakes, but not something he seems inclined to worry about. “I think where this business has sort of failed is they’re trying to placate an audience that doesn’t exist yet,” he says. “I try not to think about, ‘What if people don’t like this?’ ”
For all the scale shift, the attention still feels slightly surreal for Basso. The day before this interview, he was stopped on the street in New York City by a fan.
“This old guy named Albert, from Montenegro, came up to me and told me he was a big fan,” he says. “He said his family back home are big fans. I was like, ‘Dude, this is sick.’ “
This story appeared in the Feb. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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