Homeland's biggest secret? As the new series hits the screen, LINA DAS goes on set to find out
By LINA DAS
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At a secret location, deep in the heart of nowhere, CIA agents Carrie Mathison and Peter Quinn are leading a man into an interrogation room.
Carrie asks the man — who is of Middle Eastern appearance, with his shirt covered in blood — the whereabouts of Saul Berenson, her mentor and newly appointed director of the CIA.
Quinn handcuffs the man and exits the room with Carrie, as questions swirl around the viewer’s head. Who is the guy in the bloody shirt, and what information does he have? Where’s Saul? And where is Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, the world’s most wanted terrorist?
Cornered: Claire Danes pictured as CIA agent Carrie Mathison with Damian Lewis as Nick Brody in season three of Homeland
Yes, Homeland is back, and ready yet again to pose more questions than it answers. A huge success worldwide, the show has been praised for providing TV with the most nuanced take yet on the continuing War On Terror, and numbers Presidents Obama and Clinton among its many fans.
It stars British actor Damian Lewis as Brody, and Claire Danes as the bipolar Carrie, who suspected that Brody had been turned into an Al Qaeda sleeper agent while in captivity. And though she is eventually proved right, she ends up falling in love with him — with predictably dire consequences.
The show is about to embark on its third series in the UK this Sunday, and I’m in a studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, where an air of secrecy enshrouds the set.
Plotlines are keenly guarded and actors fearful of divulging too much information. Even director Lesli Linka Glatter, now filming episode six of the show’s 12-episode run, is wary of giving anything away.
‘If I tell you,’ she says in true espionage fashion, ‘I’ll have to kill myself!’
‘If I tell you,’ she says in true espionage fashion, ‘I’ll have to kill myself!’
Fans of Homeland will know that the last series ended with a bang. The show’s principal baddie, Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban), the Al Qaeda agent who had turned Brody and vowed to bring down the U.S., was finally caught and killed, but not before orchestrating his grand opus — bombing CIA headquarters and killing 219 people, including the then-CIA director David Estes (David Harewood).
Under oath: Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) finds herself in a bad place at the start of the third season of Homeland as she faces a Senate investigation into the bombing at the end of season two
Only Carrie and Brody escape, with Brody suspected of aiding the attack and having to go on the run. Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) also survives and finds himself head of the CIA.
‘Saul will do anything it takes to help humanity,’ explains Patinkin, ‘and he’ll sacrifice anything to save Carrie.’
The beginning of series three, which takes place some four weeks after the bombing, finds Carrie in a very bad place. With her lover Brody in hiding, her colleagues dead and the prospect of facing a Senate investigation into the bombing, she comes off her medications.
‘She’s off them for a couple of reasons,’ says Claire Danes during a break in filming. ‘The primary one being that she feels hugely responsible for this devastating loss, and is convinced that had she not been on medication, she would have had all her mental faculties and been able to anticipate Abu’s ruse and thwart the attack. It’s a risky move, and ultimately she gets in trouble for it.’
Danes, now 34, is as relaxed and centred off-screen as Carrie is manic on it. Even so, she admits she was nervous returning to the character, not least because ‘I was a new mum and couldn’t have been in a more antithetical mode [she has a nine-month-old son with husband Hugh Dancy, star of the TV series Hannibal]. I was in a euphoric mummy bubble, and then I had to go to the very other end of the spectrum.’
I let my country down: Carrie cuts an emotional figure as she struggles to deal with Brody's disappearance
Her portrayal of the pathologically off-centre Carrie has won Danes numerous awards (the show secured 11 Emmy nominations this year, and Danes won for the second time as leading actress).
‘She’s more isolated and disillusioned than she’s ever been, and it’s really upsetting,’ says Claire. ‘She’s estranged from her lover and her mentor. She’s really in a corner. But she will survive, because she always does.’
As for the other love of her life, Brody, viewers will have to wait a while before their complicated romance can even hope to resume as he doesn’t even appear in the first two episodes. Six weeks into the shoot, Danes and Lewis have yet to film a scene together.
Whether the Carrie-Brody love story can stay the course remains to be seen. Rumours have abounded that Brody may be killed off this season. Lewis himself jokes that ‘these guys have been trying to kill me since the end of season one’.
And earlier this year, Howard Gordon, the show’s co-creator along with Alex Gansa, said: ‘It is entirely possible that there could be Homeland without Brody. But there is something about the relationship between Carrie and Saul that feels like the twin pole stars.’
I'm feeling fine: Carrie also takes herself off her medication for her bipolar disorder, blaming the drugs for her failure to predict the car bomb. Danes reveals Carrie is more isolated and disillusioned than she's ever been
Mandy Patinkin, whose Saul is part mentor, part protector and part disappointed dad to the renegade Carrie, is certainly a lot more upbeat than his CIA counterpart as he wanders around between scenes, belting out tunes in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.
His relationship with Carrie is very much centre of the new series, although with his inscrutable stare and all-enveloping beard, one is never entirely sure what he’s thinking.
There was speculation in the first two series that Saul might have been the CIA mole, passing on vital information to Abu Nazir’s people. Whether or not he is the mole, Patinkin claims not to know.
‘It’s unnecessary to think about it. Saul believes in what he has to do. He’s one of the most hopeful people I’ve ever known.’
Optimism, though, isn’t the pervading mood of Homeland’s CIA, which now finds itself fighting for its very existence.
Following the explosion, it has had to rebuild and regroup — something clearly evident on set. The new CIA offices are makeshift and spare, although the obligatory boards crammed with suspects are still present.
Reluctant: Saul becomes the director of the CIA following the death of David Estes in last season's bomb blast
There are new agents, including an analyst of Iranian descent, Fara Sherazi (Nazanin Boniadi), and a smattering of the old ones, too, including Peter Quinn, the black ops man. Played by British actor Rupert Friend, Quinn does ‘what he has to’, says Friend, ‘and his job is nefarious — the clean-up work, the stuff the CIA doesn’t even admit goes on.’
Friend, talking during a break in filming, has blood on his hands, literally and also perhaps metaphorically, when he lets slip that Quinn ‘commits a mistake which he has then to live with — for the rest of the series, and likely the rest of his life’.
Friend is one of a number of Brits on the show, including Lewis, newcomer Nazanin Boniadi and Sarita Choudhury (Saul’s wife Mira).
Patinkin believes one reason Homeland has struck such a chord with viewers is that it deals with a subject with which we are all familiar: family — be it the quasi father-daughter relationship between Saul and Carrie, or the more global family of nations, together with its assorted feuds and spats.
Despite the plaudits, Homeland also faced criticism for series two — for its outlandish plot devices and overly dramatic sub-plots. This season, everyone insists those concerns have been addressed.
‘I think they made the choice to go very grounded with the beginning of this season,’ says director Lesli Linka Glatter.
‘I think they made the choice to go very grounded with the beginning of this season,’ says director Lesli Linka Glatter.
Friend agrees. ‘I think they’ve gone back to a more psychological spy thriller feel, where it’s less about dramatic set pieces and more about the exploration of the psyche.’
‘That’s the true heart of Homeland and where it does its best work.’
- Homeland is on Channel 4 on Sunday at 9pm.
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