Sacha Baron Cohen has brought so many outlandish characters to life in envelope-pushing projects such as "Da Ali G Show" and "Who Is America?" that it's easy to forget he has a serious side. He gets to show that part of himself in the Netflix series "The Spy," based on the life of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, which began streaming Friday.
The Mossad agent worked undercover from 1961 to 1965 in Syria, where he developed close relationships with the political and military hierarchy, becoming the chief adviser to the minister of defense. He became so driven by the need to help his country there became a point where he lost control of his double identity.
Baron Cohen found taking on the role to be daunting.
"There is a family — his wife and his children — who survived him, and you want to create a good bit of drama, but you also want to do something that's respectful to their relative's memory," he said. "I wanted to understand this man who was ready to sacrifice his life because of a belief. I was drawn to the concept of a deputy accountant in a supermarket who ends up going undercover as a multimillionaire businessman.
"The story is so incredible, it's almost unbelievable."
The intelligence Eli Cohen gathered before his arrest and execution in 1965 was a key to Israel's success in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Baron Cohen, who was born in west London to Jewish parents, was aware of the story long before he was offered the role because of a book his father purchased years ago. He had been offered the opportunity to play Cohen in the past, but those projects were feature films. He found the story so complex that the story could be played out properly only through multiple episodes.
One reason the actor became so intrigued with playing Cohen was the element of how a fairly normal person could become one of the most successful spies of the 20th century. He wanted to know what it was about Cohen that made powerful people trust him.
