‘The Night Agent’ Breakout Star Gabriel Basso Reveals Why He Quit Acting At 18 & Then Returned

The Night Agent is the show everyone is talking about right now. It’s hard to believe at one point that star Gabriel Basso, a.k.a. Peter Sutherland, wasn’t even acting at all. The 28-year-old made his late-night talk show debut on the April 21 of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and revealed he quit acting at 18.

“I think actors are really insulated from reality, and I think of all people actors should be the least insulated people because they’ve got to portray real things. And so everything sort of felt like a pseudo-experience to me,” Gabriel said about why he quit acting. “As a kid where [you’re told], oh, you can be the fighter, and not actually hit anybody or know what it’s like to get hit, it just felt very fake. So I quit because I didn’t want to be depressed… And now I’m back.”

Gabriel certainly didn’t sit around during his hiatus. Jimmy Fallon brought up that Gabriel is skilled in archery, drawing, weightlifting, amateur fighting, drumming, the violin, welding, and more. “I don’t have a social life,” the actor quipped.

Gabriel has his first breakout roles in the Showtime series The Big C and the film Super 8 when he was just a teenager. The actor worked steadily until he decided to take an extended break at 18 for “7 or 8 years.”

Well, the actor is back in full force. The Night Agent has become one of Netflix’s biggest shows ever. Just three weeks after its March 23 debut, The Night Agent made the ranks of Netflix’s Top 10 of the Most Popular English-language TV shows. The show has already been renewed for season 2.

A day after the show’s premiere, Gabriel wrote on Instagram, “Sort of blown away by y’alls reception of the show and its not even the weekend yet haha just know that this was a massive group effort. I dont think some people realize how collaborative this medium is. Everyone absolutely killed it from the top down. I feel like a proud dad. Oh well, back to the basement for me.”

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