“Honestly, I don’t even know how much of it is real,” Barrera says of her character being tasked with faking a romance with Liu’s Alexander on the upcoming Peacock drama.

Simu Liu and Melissa Barrera’s The Copenhagen Test romance has a surprising tie to Love Island

"Honestly, I don't even know how much of it is real," Barrera says of her character being tasked with faking a romance with Liu's Alexander on the upcoming Peacock drama.

By Patrick Gomez

Patrick Gomez is an Executive Editor at . Formerly at People magazine and The A.V. Club, the Critics Choice and Television Critics Association member has appeared on 'Today,' 'Extra!,' 'Access Hollywood,' 'E! News,' 'CNN,' and 'Nightline,' and can be seen frequently on 'Good Morning America.' Follow the Texas Native at @PatrickGomezLA wherever your media is social for all things 'For All Mankind' 'Top Chef,' and puppy related.

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November 28, 2025 9:00 a.m. ET

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Michelle (Melissa Barrera) and Alexander (Simu Liu) on 'The Copenhagen Test'. Credit:

- *The Copenhagen Test* is an upcoming "spy-fi" drama on Peacock (releasing Dec. 27).

- Intelligence operatives Alexander (Simu Liu) and Michelle (Melissa Barrera) must fake a romance to trick the enemy hacker who is spying on Alexander through his own eyes and ears.

- Liu says he and his fiancée are big fans of a reality dating show that reminds him a lot of the Alexander-Michelle dynamic.

At the start of a new crush, it's normal to ask yourself, "Do they really like me as much as it seems they do?" But *The Copenhagen Test* takes that scenario to the extreme.

The upcoming Peacock "spy-fi" drama stars Simu Liu a low-level intelligence officer who discovers that an enemy entity has introduced nanite technology into his body and is tapping his eyes and ears to gather secret information and sabotage missions.

Alexander's boss (Brian d'Arcy James) thrusts him into field ops work in an attempt to identify and capture the hacker — the agency taking over every aspect of Alexander's life, including his relationship status.

To keep tabs on him, the agency sets him up with one of their operatives (Melissa Barrera), who poses as a bartender. (Barrera's character goes by a few names on the show — including Michelle and Natalie — though we don't know if any of them are her real one.

"I use Michelle because that's what everybody called me on set," says the *Scream* and *In the Heights* star, so we'll use it here too.

Knowing they are under the watchful eyes and ears of the enemy, the romance must seem real at all times, minus the brief moments where the hack's signal goes down.**

"The audience has to believe something real is happening between them," Barrera says in **'s latest cover story of Alexander and Michelle.

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"Even if she's lying, there are these moments of honesty where you want to believe she likes him," the actress continues. "Honestly, I don't even know how much of it is real."**

Liu likens the dynamic to a show he watches regularly: "This is going to be the worst sound bite ever, but my fiancée and I are *Love Island* fans."

"I really think there's an element to what we do in this industry that actually gave me a really key insight to what Alexander's feeling — whether it's not necessarily a dating show, but you see this all the time on *Love Island*," he explains. "You see people play it up for the cameras. They know that people are watching, and they know that people are voting on whether or not they get to stay on the island. So how they are with each other and the connections that they forge...there's a level of artifice to it."

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"Can you say that that negates the authenticity of the relationship completely? Maybe not," he continues. "Maybe they each know that there's something there, but they're playing this duality of like, 'Okay, it's you and me, and we're both in understanding that we need to play something up for the audiences out there.' Maybe there's something going on under as well when all the cameras are turned off. think actually really played for me with the Alexander-Michelle dynamic."

All eight episodes of *The Copenhagen Test* season 1 drop Dec. 27 on Peacock.

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Source: “EW TV”