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By the third season of Netflix’s The Night Agent, Gabriel Basso is used to filming on location. The production has traveled from Washington D.C. to Vancouver, to New York and Bangkok; in the latest season, which dropped on the streaming platform Feb. 19, Basso and the crew went to Istanbul to film the first episode. “I was always on the move my entire life, so it’s been easy for me to bounce around, and I love history and experiencing different places and cultures, so that part is really cool to me,” says Basso. “Honestly, the most frustrating thing is the gym: losing a gym routine, having to build a new one. Hotel gyms are super depressing.”

Basso needs the gym in part because of his heavy stunt work on the series about a clandestine officer who uncovers a government conspiracy. The actor, 31, prides himself in his participation in The Night Agents fight scenes, and this season the production upped the ante with a car chase through the Turkish capital, an extreme underwater brawl and explosions aplenty. Here, he breaks down how it all went down.

Can you talk about how shooting in Istanbul, on location, influenced this season?

We shot at an actual soccer game [for the first episode]. We got their first two goals on camera. There’s a scene where Genesis walks by me and I’m supposed to blend in with the crowd, and right when she stood up to do so they scored and everyone was up out of their seats cheering. I was celebrating in the crowd, too. It was so sick. They’re known for being a really passionate fan base, so feeling that energy in the stadium was great.

Is that the sort of moment where you can really feel the Netflix budget at work?

Well, we honestly were sneaking shots. It’s because of how passionate they are — we were worried that if we had a big footprint, and they lost the game, they would blame it on us. So we did all handheld cameras, not really any lights, very low profile.

What felt the most different about season 3 versus the first two years?

The first season was very chaotic. No one really knew what the show was. We didn’t have proof of concept, really. Season two was our first time in New York and we had the pressure, obviously, from season one. This time we finally figured the show out. Even in season two, when Peter is finally allowed to be a night agent, he was still looking for permission to do what he was hired to do. Now, he’s hit his stride as a character.

How involved are you in the preproduction phase of the show?

I’m in the writer’s room process early on. They’ll pitch me the overarching idea for the season, and I’ll give them some ideas.

Are you pitching story arcs, or things that are more set piece or stunt work-focused?

Anything that I think is cool. I pitched the reverse 180 during the car chase scene in Turkey. I went out under the guise of getting some wheel time in a parking lot, and I had Josiah my stunt double hold the camera on the back right pillar. I was like, this shot would be sick, me looking past the lens and then throwing this reverse 180. It went up the ladder and they said no a few times, but I continued to chip away at ’em.

When they say no to that, is it because of the liability issue of you doing that stunt?

Yeah. And I say this every time, but I think it should like what you talk about with the NFL — you’re getting paid millions of dollars to take these hits. It’s part of the risk. Of course, I’m not going to do something stupid, and I’m going to train and there should be some level of insurance and liability and everything. Even if something doesn’t work, it’s like OK, he died in pursuit of greatness.

What does your family think of this line of thinking?

I don’t ask. I’m sure they wouldn’t love getting a call that I’ve been permanently injured but to me, it’s how did it happen? If I’m speeding down the 101 or the 405 being an idiot, they would hate that. But if it was like, he tried to make film history by doing this — that would be sick.

Whose idea was the underwater stunt at the end of the season?

There was a lot of back and forth on that. We did a lot of underwater training and breathing work. Austin Brewer is the stunt guy’s name, we were in the tank for nine or 10 hours just sort of scrapping it out. It was kind of stressful. He had a jacket on, and we were in there for so long that it changed color.

Did they tell you about that stunt ahead of time, or did you read it when the script came in?

I think it was originally written that we would fight in the car while it was on land, and then I drove it into the water and swam out of it. We eventually moved the fight underwater after our fight choreographer came up with some really cool stuff and someone pitched the idea of fighting while the truck filled up with water.

How did you create the explosion that comes after you’re on the dock?

We had a bunch of water canons that went off after I crawled out.

Have you ever been scared in the moment?

No. I think if I was scared I wouldn’t do it. Having your adrenaline pumping isn’t the same as fear. The minute you doubt yourself — they call it target fixation in skydiving, where you’re looking at a tree or a telephone pole thinking “don’t hit that,” and you start drifting there because you’re looking at it. So if you start thinking about the bad scenarios then you’re setting yourself up.

Linda Seger, who served as a script consultant on films from Peter Jackson, Roland Emmerich and hundreds of others and authored 11 books about screenwriting, has died. She was 80.

Seger died Feb. 16 of breast cancer at her home in Cascade, Colorado, her husband of 42 years, Peter Le Var, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Seger began her script consulting business in 1981 based on a script analysis method she developed as part of her doctoral dissertation, “What Makes a Script Work?” Her first book on screenwriting, Making a Good Script Great: A Guide for Writing and Rewriting, was published in 1987.

Ron Howard was given the book by his father, actor Rance Howard, and he told Seger that he used it on every one of his films beginning with Apollo 13 (1995). Tony Bill (Oscar-winning producer on The Sting), William Kelley (Oscar-winning writer on Witness) and Barbara Corday (co-creator of Cagney & Lacey) are among those who have praised the book over the years.

Seger was a consultant on Jackson’s Dead Alive and Emmerich’s Universal Soldier, both released in 1992, and Ray Bradbury was a client, too.

She also was a script consultant on Pasttime (1990) and Picture Bride (1995), winners of Audience Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and on such other films as Romero (1989), The Long Walk Home (1990), The Neverending Story II (1990), Luther (2003), Mr. Jones (1993) and Dating the Enemy (1996).

The younger of two daughters, Linda Sue Seger was born on Aug. 27, 1945, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Her father, Linus, was a pharmacist and her mother, Agnes, a homemaker and piano teacher.

She earned her undergraduate degree from Colorado College in 1967, followed by master’s degrees from the Pacific School of Religion and Northwestern and a doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union.

The prolific Seger consulted with writers, producers, directors and production companies on an estimated 2,500 scripts, 100 produced films and 35 produced TV projects, and she taught screenwriting on six continents and 33 countries, including Russia, Bulgaria and New Zealand.

She also led seminars for executives at ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney, Embassy Television, RAI (Italy) and ZDF (Germany) and for members of the AFI, the DGA and the WGA before her retirement in 2020.

Her other books on screenwriting included 1990’s Creating Unforgettable Characters; 1992’s The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction Into Film; 1994’s From Script to Screen: The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking; 1999’s Making a Good Writer Great; 2003’s Advanced Screenwriting: Raising Your Script to the Academy Award Level; 2008’s And the Best Screenplay Goes to … ; 2011’s Writing Subtext: What Lies Beneath; 2019’s The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking: From Script to Screen; and 2020’s You Talkin’ to Me?: How to Write Great Dialogue.

Seger also wrote the 1996 book When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film, featuring interviews with Sherry Lansing, Dawn Steel and Nora Ephron; eight books on spirituality, including 2016’s Jesus Rode a Donkey: Why Millions of Christians Are Democrats; and a 2025 memoir, Unpacking.

Her husband said her favorite film was Stanley Donen’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954).

Survivors include her half-brother, Fred. Donations in her memory can be made to a cancer charity.

Nicki Minaj raised eyebrows and ire among a portion of her fan base after her latest President Trump-related social media post — a signed Bible from the rapper’s newfound political hero — went wide online, the latest in a trend that may indicate the popular rapper’s voice may be seeing some artificial amplification online. 

The multi-platinum-selling rapper-singer-songwriter, who has been vocal but not exactly outspoken on political topics over her nearly 20-year career, is known equally for her freestyling prowess as her penchant for eviscerating her enemies, in her songs, online, wherever. Recently, Minaj has become a political lightning rod amid an unabashed embrace of MAGA and Trump’s politics, which began to appear on her X page late last year. This rightward slide began in earnest after Minaj delivered a speech in November at the United Nations, advocating for an end to religious violence — freedom from persecution being one political matter on which she’d previously sounded off publicly. 

This speech caught Trump’s attention, as she favorably name-checked his policies in her speech; given Trump’s history of jumping at opportunities to associate himself with the world of hip-hop, the friendship, or at least a public mutual appreciation, between the two Queens-raised celebrities was born. “I love Nicki Minaj,” Trump told guests at the White House Black History Month reception, calling her beautiful and complimenting her skin and nails. Over the weekend, the gifted Bible Minaj received from Trump brought fresh controversy — partly because Trump was now selling a Bible with his name on it for $1,000, but for Minaj fans, her remark that this was “one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve ever received in my entire life” indicated the red-pilled rapper had gone into MAGAland and was now past the point of no return. 

Minaj’s Saturday post had significant reach on the X platform, with 14,000-plus comments and more than 117,000 users liking it as of Monday afternoon. Its reach is relevant this week, and likely under a higher level of scrutiny, after a report analyzing the impact of the rapper’s political tweets is the subject of a just-released study from Cyabra, an Israeli disinformation security company that detects fake social media accounts. Minaj’s rightward political turn has been highly publicized, but its outsized amplification on the X platform seems to have caught the eyes of the Cyabra team.

The percentage of X that is made up of bots, which can range from malicious to useful, has been debated for years. Twitter, which X used to be called, claimed the number was under 5 percent; others have said it’s up to 80 percent of its users.

The study that the firm published this week, titled “Coordinated Inauthentic Amplification of Political Discourse on Nicki Minaj’s X Account,” looked at the rapper’s X account and who amplifies her political posts of late — the persecution of Christians in Nigeria; a new opposition to gender transition; criticism of Democratic politicians, particularly California Gov. Gavin Newsom; and her support for conservative political figures all entered her sphere of commentary.

Focusing on her politically related posts and assessing the authenticity of the accounts interacting with them, Cyabra’s study identifies a “materially elevated level of inauthentic activity” in her X account’s comments. Cyabras’s study shows that  33 percent of accounts that engaged with Minaj’s political posts were deemed fake, which is substantially higher than the baseline levels typically seen on social posts. 

In its analysis of the campaign to amplify Minaj’s posts and her newfound far-right point of view, the firm indicated that the Minaj X campaign’s primary objective had less to do with her embrace of MAGA and more with boosting the rapper’s reputation. 

“[The campaign was] focusing on reinforcing visible support for Nicki Minaj — particularly in posts that attracted criticism — in order to manufacture the appearance of broad public endorsement and a supportive fan base,” the report states.

Comments generated by fake profiles in support of Minaj were “predominantly brief, repetitive and low in semantic complexity.” Praising keywords and Minaj-positive hashtags were being used, rather than “original or substantive engagement,” the report found.

These sham X profiles operated in a coordinated manner, according to Cyabra, with synchronized posting, repeated keywords and messaging that was telling in how consistent it was across multiple X comment sections. The campaign generated significant impact by embedding fake accounts into real user conversations, resulting in 59,001 engagements and substantially increasing the visibility and reach of the amplified content.

As far as Cyabra is concerned, the Minaj boost campaign was a real success story.

“Overall, the findings show that the campaign was effective, using coordinated inauthentic engagement to materially influence perceived support and narrative visibility,” the firm concludes in its report.

The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Minaj and Cyabra for comment but did not immediately hear back on Monday.