Sebastian Koch has spent two decades as one of European cinema’s most recognisable faces of the espionage story told from the inside. He was the playwright under surveillance in The Lives of Others, the East German lawyer bargaining over a prisoner exchange in Steven Spielberg‘s Bridge of Spies, and the German entrepreneur Otto Düring across the fifth and sixth seasons of Showtime’s Homeland. Apple TV is now putting that résumé to work in Disavowed, a series about a CIA officer thrown out of the agency he served.

As Deadline first reported, Koch has joined the action-thriller as a series regular. His character has not been revealed. He joins a cast led by James Marsden, alongside Norman Reedus, Sylvia Hoeks, Bokeem Woodbine, Noma Dumezweni, Daniel Zovatto, Mia Tharia and Sonita Henry.

According to the series premise published by Deadline, Marsden plays Brad Griffin, a legendary CIA case officer who is abruptly fired in the middle of a global hunt for an elusive assassin responsible for killing his colleague. In that logline, the disgraced and outcast Griffin decides to go after the $15 million federal bounty on the assassin’s head, a setup that turns the spy procedural into a freelance manhunt.

The series was created by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, the writing partnership whose credits include Iron Man. Michelle MacLaren, whose directing credits include Breaking Bad and Apple’s own The Morning Show, will direct the first two episodes and executive produce alongside Rebecca Hobbs under her overall deal with Apple TV. Marcum, Holloway, Tom Spezialy and Marsden are also executive producers. The show comes from Apple Studios, with Blue Marble Pictures, the company behind Pachinko, producing; Theresa Kang and Caroline Garity executive produce for Blue Marble.

Koch brings an international filmography that crosses languages and genres: Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, Paul Weitz’s Bel Canto and Never Look Away, which reunited him with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the director of The Lives of Others. He has also worked the Hollywood action register before, as the Russian Yuri Komarov in A Good Day to Die Hard.

No premiere date or episode count has been announced for Disavowed. Koch’s upcoming slate includes Matt Reeves’ The Batman: Part II and Gabriele Salvatores’ The Luneberg Variant. He is represented by The Artist Partnership in the UK and Agentur Schlag in Germany.

In The Lives of Others, Koch played the man an intelligence service listened to through the walls. The premise of Disavowed has the CIA firing one of its own, and the role Koch will play in that story is the one detail Deadline reports is still under wraps.

Tags: Steven Spielberg, casting, Meghan Markle, Apple TV, Matt Reeves, Bokeem Woodbine, Mia Tharia, James Marsden