Berlin Station has returned and star Leland Orser told FanSided what’s in store during the new season of the top-notch spy thriller.

TV’s best spy series is back. EPIX‘s drama Berlin Station is now in its third season, and continuing to deliver overseas intrigue along with outstanding performances.

Leland Orser, who has been magnificent as hard-nosed CIA Deputy Chief Robert Kirsch, previewed what’s coming for Robert and his colleagues while talking about his experiences being part of such a timely series.

Find out what intelligence he had to give below, then make sure you tune into the next episode on Dec. 16 on EPIX. If you don’t have EPIX, you can sign up for a free trial here.

FanSided: Berlin Station is now your longest TV role since your days on ER. How has it been to live with Robert Kirsch for three seasons?

Leland Orser: It’s a dream to develop a character, to live with a character, to dig deeper into a character. I think it’s a great thing for the actor and a great thing for the show. You learn more about yourself as that character the more time you spend with them. I love the character of Robert Kirsch. This is a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve and finds it very difficult to not to say what he’s thinking.

What would he say about another change at the top of the team? Because there’s a third Chief of Station this season.

He believes that Valerie [Michelle Forbes] is the right person for the job and that she’ll be there and he’s good with it. He respects her. He respects her talents. They’re longtime colleagues.

They had issues with each other in the first season; I think they worked through those and those were no longer existent in the second season, and they certainly don’t exist in the third season. They’re there to get the job done. They’re professionals before anything else.

Berlin Station season 3 began with Robert on a mission alongside Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage). Is that typical of what fans will see from him this season?

Robert’s in the field this season. He’s back to where he started as a CIA agent [and] he’s very good at it. He’s tested. He’s challenged. He’s pushed to the limit and he has decisions to make on the fly—and right or wrong, he has to live with the effects of those decisions.

Some of those decisions don’t go the way he wants them to, so I think you’re going to see Robert go down a dark hole this season. It’s a very big, tough season for him, a very tough journey for him and one from which it’s possible he won’t recover.

Is there anyone who can help him out of that hole? Someone on the team that he could rely on?

This season is completely different for Robert. Robert ends up in a very bad place and it’s interesting where he finds support and where he finds help this season. He actually finds it from the younger members of his team—Keke Palmer’s character April and Ismael Cruz Cordova’s character Torres. Both of them are helpful and supportive of Robert when he needs it.

How was it for you to focus more on the professional side of the character after the second season of Berlin Station dove into Robert’s personal life?

I loved doing both. Robert’s come to terms with the fact that he’s better at his job than anything else in his life and he’s accepted that. There’s a certain amount of emotional cauterizing that’s taken place but it’s always there. His son is ever present in his life, in his thoughts but he’s come to terms with that his job is what he does. He’s not a full time parent, he’s certainly not a husband but he’s come to terms with that and he’s put that in a place where he can move on into his work and do his work well.

Thematically the show has proven to be very timely. How would you describe the story in Berlin Station season 3? What are the issues and themes it plays with?

The CIA’s job is to find the truth and deliver it to the President. How did that job change in a post-truth, alternative facts, fake news world? Our relationship with the rest of the world—will we continue to be the moral authority, the backbone of the West and the rest of the world?

What’s our relationship to Russia? Russia knows they have a friend in the American government and how far will they press that friendship? Do they perceive it as weakness? And what will they do to take advantage of it?

These are some of the themes that are we’re playing around with this year. Trust is a big theme this year. Who do you trust, who can you trust, who don’t you trust, what is trust and what are the different levels of trust? That’s a big theme for Robert this season.

The biggest strength of Berlin Station is its cast. How has your relationship with the cast evolved three seasons on?

We’re an extraordinary team there now. It’s the greatest thing in the world. It means that we’ve achieved a level personally and professionally amongst each other that will allow us to go to a even higher level creatively. So much is now second nature; we all know each other, we all love each other. We all appreciate coming to work with each other. We’re grateful for what each and every one of us brings.

We have this brand new showrunner, Jason Horwitch, who came to the show with such excitement and such energy. He took what was already in place, made it his own and then ran with it. It’s as if he’s been with us since the beginning, which is wild. He’s gotten inside our characters and inside our heads, and taken what we’d already laid down and written for it and written into the future.

How would you describe the progression of Berlin Station overall?

Season 3 takes the show to a whole new level. There’s so much to appreciate this season, and it’s so exciting and it’s so timely. You open up your laptop or phone every morning and frighteningly enough, you’re seeing many aspects of the story that we’re telling this season on the front page. What started out as, Jason likes to call it a cautionary tale, has turned into something else.

New episodes of Berlin Station air every Sunday on EPIX at 9 p.m. For more TV interviews and news, follow the Television category at FanSided.