Once Upon a Time’s Sean Maguire cast in Timeless

Sean Maguire will be playing James Bond writer Ian Fleming in the upcoming NBC time-travel drama, Timeless.

Maguire previously starred in Once Upon a Time as Robin Hood. But according to a report on Entertainment Weekly, for Timeless the British actor will be setting aside his bow and arrow and trading them for a gun and a martini, since Fleming served as an undercover British agent behind enemy lines. EW reveals that he will be appearing in the fourth episode, “Party at Castle Varlar.”

Timeless executive producers Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan discussed the inclusion of Fleming in the World War II-set episode. Kripke told EW:

“We knew we couldn’t just do a war movie, so where we landed was, ‘Alright, then let’s do a spy movie… We needed a spy in Germany to help our heroes and bring them into this world…and we turned to our historian, and he said, ‘Let me work on it,’ and then he comes running in the room an hour later and says, ‘Ian Fleming was there!’….So, quickly, we realized our World War II story was really a James Bond movie, and we had the real James Bond.”

Timeless chronicles the adventures of a heroic trio led by historian Lucy (Abigail Spencer) whose mission is to chase the terrorist Flynn (Goran Visnjic). EW reveals that each episode will feature a different historical era.

Ryan told EW:

“I was really intrigued by the idea of having a story engine that would allow us to tell different kinds of stories each week…Our pilot, which deals with the Hindenburg, is a kind of disaster movie. When we go to World War II in Germany, that’s a spy story. When we go to Watergate in the ‘70s, that’s a conspiracy story, and then Las Vegas, Rat Pack story is an Ocean’s Eleven kind of thing.”

Timeless premieres on October 3 on NBC.