To play Bosko, the CIA London Station Chief in the new Paramount+ spy series “The Agency,” Richard Gere had questions.

“Agency” is a lavish, high-profile American adaptation of a brilliant French series “Le Bureau des Legendes” that looked at the complications and trauma for agents who go undercover not for a weekend or a month but six years.

George Clooney produces and Britain’s Tony-winning playwright Jez Butterworth scripts with his brother John-Henry.

“Look,” Gere, 75, began in a Zoom interview, “it all comes down to the script Jez wrote with his brother. George, who I admire a lot, I never saw.

“Everyone keeps asking, How did you and George get along? He wasn’t there, but his production team is terrific. And the script is really good.”

That said, Gere “had a lot of ideas” about Bosko.

“As the rewrite started to come in, unexpected aspects of Bosko emerged. That gave me a lot more room to move, a lot more rocket fuel to do other things later.  Because we’re still just laying the initial pipe for character arcs and storytelling.”

“Agency” makes clear this is dangerous, deadly work. We learn about the mandate that any agent brought in after years undercover must be monitored, psychologically analyzed.

Bosko may be near the top of the food chain but he has, thanks to Gere, a history as an underground agent.

“It was important to me. What I was feeling from the first draft is that he was almost a political appointee. He wasn’t one of those guys who had been out there in the cold.

“I felt it was much more interesting for me as someone who actually knows what it’s like to be out there. That way he can protect his people much better, advise them much better. He knows what they’re going through.

“What was interesting to me is playing that guy who has a history of being a fictional character, a spy, and also being an effective boss at this stage of his life.

“That gives me a lot of room to move in terms of storytelling here and later episodes that will come up next year – and maybe beyond that.”

It helped he was familiar with the French original.

“I had loved that. For my wife and I, it was our date show for a while.”

“The Agency” has an immense size, the opposite of the humble Paris Bureau.

“I was shook by that as well. In my mind’s eye I had thought a more ‘Slow Horses’ world of spying.

“But the London office of the CIA is huge. It’s a very important office. It controls Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa. It’s a huge station.”

The first 2 episodes of “The Agency” on Paramount+ stream Nov. 29