‘Carlos’ Star Édgar Ramírez Re-Teams With Olivier Assayas for a True Spy Drama

‘Wasp Network’ will also feature Pedro Pascal, who continues to make strides towards big-screen stardom.

Édgar Ramírez and Pedro Pascal will star in Wasp Network, the next movie from French director Olivier Assayas. Based on the true story of Cuban spies sent to infiltrate anti-Castro terrorist organizations throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the feature will be adapted from Fernando Morais’s book “The Last Soldiers of the Cold War,” which describes itself as “both a real-life spy thriller and a searching examination of the Cold War’s legacy.”

According to Variety, the Wasp Network casting was announced at the Cannes Film Festival — a place that Assayas might as well call home, given that his 1994 movie Cold Water had its world premiere in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, and his recent features Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper netted Palme d’Or and Best Director nominations, respectively.

The latter two films were also notable for featuring Kristen Stewart, which effectively translated her cachet as a Hollywood star into arthouse acclaim. Her performance opposite Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria even resulted in her becoming the first American actress to win the prestigious French César Award.

Assayas’s casting of Ramírez and Pascal could have a similarly transformative impact on their careers. Both actors are prestige-TV veterans (recent credits include The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story and Game of Thrones, respectively). Ramírez also had his breakout role working with Assayas on the biographical miniseries Carlos, playing real-life Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, popularly known as Carlos the Jackal.

Both actors also recently racked up a spate of respectable supporting parts in studio films. Pascal played Whiskey in Kingsman: The Golden Circle and will be soon be seen in The Equalizer 2 and Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, and he is set to play “a key role” in the highly-anticipated Wonder Woman 2. 

Ramírez’s recent filmography has been slightly quieter, consisting of appearances in David Ayer’s critically panned but widely streamed Netflix movie Bright and the middling best-seller adaptation The Girl on the Train, but given his success with his TV miniseries work, a starring role in a historical thriller definitely seems more attuned to his talents.

Given the circumstances of the true story of the Wasp Network, the roles Pascal and Ramírez are playing in the adaptation of the book will likely be brutal, meaty, and psychologically complex, and should prove worthy of their acting chops. It’s just a matter of time before they both become bona fide movie stars.