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Even Noah Centineo, who plays a CIA lawyer in The Recruit, isn’t immune to being on the receiving end of agency jargon. When the actor in the Netflix original series met with real agency lawyers and analysts he got the most CIA responses to questions ever. What they were, ahead. Plus, where to find them in The Recruit Season 2.
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from The Recruit Season 2.]
Centineo and other cast members met CIA employees ahead of ‘The Recruit’ Season 2
Speaking to Good Morning America ahead of The Recruit Season 2 premiere on Jan. 30, 2025, Centineo shared what happened when he and other cast members got the chance to visit CIA headquarters.
“We visited leading up to season 2, got to meet with a few analysts and lawyers, and kind of picked their brains,” he said.
So, what sort of juicy intel did Centineo and his co-stars get? Not much. “Mainly, the answer we got to our questions was, you know, ‘We’re not prepared to speak to that at this time,’” the 28-year-old recalled. So, no stories of graymail landing on the desk of a rookie CIA lawyer like Centineo’s character, Owen Hendricks, then?
Despite the CIA staffers’ response, turns out “the Agency” as Centineo’s character often refers to it on The Recruit, agreed to welcome the cast and crew for filming. “Then we shot there. We actually shot at the CIA for season 2,” Centineo said.
‘The Recruit’ star got the same answers at CIA headquarters before the show premiered
Centineo’s no stranger to hearing the CIA’s non-answer answer. Before The Recruit Season 1 premiered in December 2022, he went to CIA headquarters alongside creator Alexi Hawley, and Adam Ciralsky, the former CIA lawyer who inspired the show.
Centineo met with real CIA lawyers and analysts, asking questions about their jobs. When he got the standard “We can neither confirm nor deny” response, Centino loved it. “That’s my favorite,” he told Vanity Fair. “We were trying. At least three times, we got one of those [replies].”
Characters use the same responses in ‘The Recruit’ Season 2
If there’s one thing The Recruit gets right about the real CIA, it’s the jargon. Sure, there are obscure—and often long—acronyms, from the episode titles to other government agencies.
But when it comes to CIA sayings like the ones Centineos got from real CIA employees, they’re peppered all over the dialogue in The Recruit Season 2.
One of the best examples is, spoiler alert, when Amelia (Kaylah Zander), one of Owen’s few allies inside the agency, gets questioned about all the crazy stuff he’s been up to during his few weeks on the job.
Pressed for details, Amelia simply replies: “I’m not prepared to speak to that at this time.” In turn, when she asks questions of her own, she gets the same reply. Sure, it’s a tense scene but the back-and-forth CIA lingo adds a dose of humor.
Seasons 1 and 2 of ‘The Recruit’ are streaming on Netflix.
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