In the new FX limited series The Veil, Elisabeth Moss delivers yet another standout performance as “Imogen,” whose name is in quotes because we know from the beginning that it’s not the secretive British spy’s real name. While the captivating character drives the thrust of the series, Imogen isn’t Moss’s favorite character in the show. That honor belongs to Max, the headstrong American CIA officer played by Josh Charles. (A notably different role from his recent appearance in a Taylor Swift music video.)

“Whenever we did readings of the script, I played Max,” Moss laughs to Consequence. “No one [else was] allowed to play Max. This is not a lie. Even if there was a man who was available to play Max, he’s my character. He has the best lines in the show.” Yet she was delighted to see Charles play the character on screen, because “you can’t get enough of him.”

The Veil, written by the ever-prolific Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, See, Spencer), is a modern-day spy story where half the drama comes from watching intelligence agents from three different countries interact. In this case, that means a battle between British, French, and American agencies as Imogen escorts a suspected terrorist named Adilah (Yumna Marwan) from Turkey to London, all while hoping to draw out of her the secrets needed to stop a pending attack.

Charles says that as a “huge fan” of the spy genre (he mentions the French series The Bureau as a current favorite), he was already intrigued when he got the call about The Veil. Then he “read the first couple scripts and I was like, ‘Yes.’ What I really appreciated about this material is, I don’t think it’s a surprise that there’s so many great stories being told in the world of espionage, you know, because it’s such a great sort of template to tell stories. And there’s this really intimate character study, particularly with the two leads. I found that chess match really interesting.”

Knight tells Consequence that his inspiration for The Veil came from a conversation with producer Denise Di Nova: “She had been talking to someone who had connections with the French Intelligence services and was talking about how modern developments had led to sort of adjustments within the intelligence services of the US and France and Britain, because of the new challenges and the frictions involved.”

Knight had previously researched spy operations in America and Britain for unproduced projects, and so he went to Paris “and met some people who don’t want to be credited who were part of the French Intelligence Services. And from bits and pieces that they told me, I started to put together this story.”