In the past few years, Jason Isaacs has become a very familiar face to American audiences. The British actor is probably best known as the ruthless Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, a role he'll reprise this summer in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix . However, he's also made a name for himself in films like The Patriot and Peter Pan, and last year starred on the acclaimed Showtime series Brotherhood . In addition to all of that, Isaacs also voices Zhao on Avatar: The Last Airbender

Isaacs will be returning to television screens this week, with the US debut of the exciting miniseries The State Within , on BBC America. Isaacs stars as Mark Brydon, the British Ambassador to the United States. Brydon is present when a plane headed for England explodes moments after liftoff, crashing on a Washington DC highway Brydon is traveling along. Driven by his personal observances of the tragedy, Brydon becomes involved in the investigation into who was behind it, which quickly spirals into a much larger web of deceit and conspiracy than it first appears to be.Last month I sat down to talk with Jason Isaacs for an exclusive interview with IGN. We talked about The State Within, and the dramatic twists and turns it takes, and also discussed The Order of the Phoenix, the future of Brotherhood , and the upcoming film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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Have you seen it?F**k, I hate that, because the first episode is a bit like hearing the first line of a joke or someone throws a whole bunch of balls in the air, and you don't even know how many balls there are, you don't realize you're watching someone juggle, you just see these balls go. It's fantastically engaging, the first episode.But it's so much more satisfying to see at least the first three [episodes], when the strands start coming together. It was on Thursday nights in England, and Friday morning my phone would just be full of messages. It would be all my friends and family going, "I loved it last night! Just tell me one thing… The guy with the blond hair, that was bad when he did that thing?" And then, by the end of episode three, people would call up and go, "Ah ha! I'm glad you didn't tell me, because now I see that that girl is connected to…" It's just this fabulously labyrinthine plot.Yeah, they all come together. Every strand comes together in a kind of beautiful synthesis. You know, it's a real, edge of your seat conspiracy thriller, but it requires the audience to have a bit of a brain. If you want kind of a popcorn thriller or a cartoon, don't watch this.It does. When I first read the script, I didn't think at all, I just turned the pages like a lunatic. It's one of those things where you're going, "What's happened now? What's that guy doing? Get out of there, quick, before he kills you!" It's just a fabulously compelling story. In America, they're showing it in three two-hour chunks, which is more satisfying than six one-hours. But most of all, you want to watch it in one six-hour chunk. That's how it works best. That's how I read it, obviously. So before I engaged anything at all, I was just on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what happens next. And then I thought somebody at the BBC's got big balls to commission this. I didn't know, because I'd been away doing American films and television for so long, and I'd only really read [about] what's on British television; I hadn't watched British television in so long. I thought we didn't make things as grown up, and as engaging and as contemporize as this. And as culturally relevant as this. And I just wanted in! When it's on of course, and it's over, the news is on, and it makes you realize… While you're doing it, you're just trying to tell the story, as accurately as you can. It makes you realize how relevant everything is, because you'd hear lines directly from the script in the news or your current affair shows on Sunday; you'd listen to politicians interviewed, and they're coming up with the same thing that's on our show. And I understand, only in retrospect, that's one of the great things that drama can do. The primary level is to entertain. You've got to engage people, you've got to make them gasp, you've got to make them wonder what happens next. It does all that stuff. But it also helps us think more clearly, about the really important things going on in our world. Things being done in our name by our governments, by our corporations. And also, on a personal level, how we police ourselves, morally. What do we do, when our own self-interests and our professional ambition butts up against what we know to be right? And how important is it to tell the truth, always, and when is it important to lie? All these things are in there, but they're illustrated through gripping drama, and that's as much as you can ask for, really.