“Did you learn things in CIA training about withstanding interrogation that are going to make it harder for me to interview you?” I requested Joe Weisberg, creator of the TV espionage drama The Americans and onetime CIA agent. He appeared momentarily startled, as if he’d anticipated this to be simpler. Good, I had him the place I needed him: off-balance. I noticed him taking my measure. Then he laughed affably, however I mistrusted the affability, since I knew from his personal books that affability is among the many qualities the CIA recruits for: individuals who can get different folks to belief them, or not less than wish to have lunch with them.

I suppose I had sure fantasies about interviewing an ex-spook (was he equally profiling me? extra skillfully?), little question the results of having learn too many John le Carré novels. As it occurs, studying le Carré had rather a lot to do with propelling Weisberg himself to spycraft. Sure, he knew it was a fantasy world being depicted, but it surely was nonetheless a world he felt he belonged in. There was additionally his consuming obsession with bringing down the Soviet Union, which sadly for his profession aspirations was quickly to break down by itself.

Weisberg, who’s 57 and on the quick facet, has a pointy, presumably even hawkish visage together with an invitingly squishy-liberal midsection, which together externalize the important duality in his being, one which’s each formed his life story to this point and yielded some of the advanced married {couples} in tv historical past, the Russian sleeper brokers Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. The Americans aired on FX from 2013 to 2018, however everybody I do know appears to be compulsively binge-streaming it currently—possibly the worry that your neighbors are plotting to convey down democracy someway resonates once more with the psychological state of the nation? Loosely primarily based on the FBI’s 2010 arrest of a community of Soviet spies residing underneath assumed identities within the US, the collection springs not less than as a lot from the depths of Weisberg’s psyche. Elizabeth, a chilly warrior to her core, is, Weisberg says semi-jokingly, him pre-therapy; the détente-curious Philip is him after.

Therapy additionally figures considerably in his more moderen limited-run collection, The Patient, created together with his writing accomplice Joel Fields (they have been showrunners collectively on each collection) and starring Steve Carell as a shrink horribly unfortunate in his clientele. Something haunts me about each these exhibits, and never simply because they really feel like case research in American paranoia. At a time when most scripted tv focuses on ethical preening—trafficking in sentimentality, pandering to liberal do-gooderism, leaving us feeling higher about ourselves and the world—Weisberg’s exhibits put you thru a cruel psychological and religious wringer. They’re keen to go away you floundering.

So what about these interrogation-evading methods? I pressed Weisberg. We have been chatting in his downtown condominium, the highest two flooring of a century-old constructing—gracious entryway, high-ceilinged rooms, additionally a rental and steep third-floor walkup with an inoperable buzzer. (“Joe doesn’t have fancy taste, he’s not acquisitive, he’s not super interested in money,” says his brother, Jacob.) Decorative touches embody his late mom’s porcelain eggcup assortment, a row of household images (some “off the record”—Weisberg is divorced and has a teenage daughter), the residues of successive hobbies—images, portray, cooking—and a wall of serious-looking books. The vestibule is devoted to an intensive high-tech backpack assortment: his solely consumerist ardour is an unequivocally nerdy one.

What I actually needed to know was what he’d realized about getting inside folks’s heads—figuring out what your adversaries are considering, utilizing their wishes towards them. It’s what’s so seductive about le Carré: his operatives aren’t simply spies, they’re grasp psychological strategists. As are Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, at all times figuring out the exact proper play: who’s dissembling, the place’s the weak spot. Does CIA coaching provide you with a leg up at that sort of factor in later life? Does it make you higher at greedy darkish human complexities, thus at writing layered and contradictory characters?