Liaison explores a world where loyalty and deception intertwine across European shores
The bond between television and cinema has blurred so completely that the shift hardly shocks anyone. Vincent Cassel and Eva Green, two of France’s most internationally recognized stars, come together in a TV series for the first time. Liaison, an Apple TV+ espionage thriller that unfolds into a delicate, entangled romance, debuts on Friday the 24th. Cassel plays a prime suspect in a series of cyberattacks that seize control of London, while Green portrays the private secretary to the British Foreign Secretary and a link to a future hacker’s vulnerabilities.
What drew Cassel to Liaison at the outset?
For one thing, it marked Apple’s boldest European production to date, signaling a strong vote of confidence in the region. Cassel felt pride in being part of such an ambitious project. And then there was the opportunity to collaborate with Eva Green, which had long been a dream for him.
Did the experience live up to his expectations?
It exceeded them. He also notes that Green joined the project during preproduction, which aligned perfectly with his schedule after filming The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan. He describes the 2024 film year as Eva Green’s year, and in their working relationship, he found her to be deeply committed, yet unfailingly down-to-earth. She approaches her craft with intensity but does not take herself too seriously, emphasizing that life inevitably outweighs on-set prestige.
In earlier reflections, the idea that humans embody paradox plays a central role: the tension between doing one thing while pretending to be something else. That paradox naturally fits a spy story, and it resonated with Cassel as a core attraction of the series.
He aimed to portray a character who felt distinctly ordinary and distinctly French—a man more focused on reliability and duty than on displaying power or aggression. If appearing to be a loser is part of that balance, so be it.
Liaison presents a nuanced European thriller where the lines between hero and villain blur. Over his career, Cassel has gravitated toward projects that emphasize uncertainty and moral ambiguity, especially in action-driven narratives that challenge viewers to reassess who may truly be in the right or wrong.
Life, in this vision, is about uncovering deeper truths beneath surface appearances. The usual villain in a story rarely holds a simple backstory; the truth behind actions is often more intricate than it first seems.
Was the creator Virginie Brac familiar to the actors before Liaison?
Cassel admits to having been among the French audience who admired Brac’s earlier work, Es spiral, a widely successful series in France. Learning that Brac would write the entire show immediate confidence that Liaison would be a quality project.
Director Stephen Hopkins then came aboard, bringing an edge from his action-oriented background. Hopkins, known for Predator 2 and other thrillers, was someone Cassel had encountered years earlier in Cannes. The possibility of Hopkins steering Liaison promised a visually arresting ride, one that could translate a cinematic sensibility to the television format.
That blend—cinematic scale with television storytelling—captured Cassel’s imagination. The plan was to craft a series with a strong, movie-like texture, blending ambition with intimate character moments to keep audiences glued to the screen. The aerial sequences among city blocks became a signature moment, a testament to the ambition behind the project.
Normally, when someone is labeled a villain, a more layered truth often emerges.
Why hasn’t Cassel pursued more dramatic roles lately?
Today’s era has shifted how audiences consume stories. It isn’t necessarily television anymore, but a broader sense of screen entertainment where the term television itself feels outdated. The budget for Liaison is sizable, even by French production standards, reflecting a willingness to invest in ambitious, prestige programming.
Liaison is Apple’s first series conducted in both French and English. One of the most appealing benefits of streaming globalization is hearing characters speak in their mother tongues, followed by further languages spoken in the series. The show invites audiences to experience multiple languages in a single narrative, offering a sensory bridge to other cultures. Streaming platforms have made it easier to explore cinema-like experiences without leaving home, from Africa to Spain, with Spanish-language hits like La casa de papel demonstrating how multilingual storytelling can captivate a wide audience. That kind of cross-cultural exposure would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
What comes next for the actor? The next project on his radar is a return to David Cronenberg’s world in The Shrouds, followed by a French production about Saint-Exupéry and Guillaumet that explores the dawn of aviation with an Argentine director, Pablo Agüero.