Actress and producer Claire Danes has owned her role as CIA agent Carrie Mathison in Homeland. Her patriotic character’s dogmatic approach to rooting out terrorists has landed her in some tricky situations over the seasons – especially with her “sleeping with the enemy”. During a visit to the Cape Town set of the fourth instalment of the Emmy award-winning series, Debashine Thangevelo found out how the events from last season changed Carrie, who is also now a mother
WHEN Homeland debuted in 2011, it reeled in a curious fan base who have now been converted to die-hards. It is surreal storytelling with flawed characters working within the confined parameters of an easily unhinged political playground.
Claire Danes has been crucial to the series. In breathing life into a bipolar Carrie, she has often left viewers ambivalent about their feelings towards her. But her loyalty to her country has been unwavering.
In season four, when the war zone shifts to Kabul and Islamabad, a lot has changed for Carrie, who is nursing guilt for leading Brody to his death. Although she is now a mother, she is shirking her responsibilities and drowning herself in work.
Despite a long day on set, the gorgeous actress appeared for our chat armed with a warm smile. Dressed casually in jeans and a leather jacket, she dived right into the interview.
“We are in the ‘ops room’ this week. It’s a lot of green screen work, which is not my most favourite kind. I prefer human interaction.
“We’re shooting episode six of season four and it’s very operation-focused. We’re monitoring the movements of key assets and key targets from a distance so there’s a great deal of anxiety, of course.”
This season, there are several new game-changers in the Brody-less world.
Talking to Carrie’s state of mind, Danes says: “She’s had trauma after trauma… to the point where she is now beyond a certain threshold. And her response is not so histrionic. She’s kind of flatlined and is now alarmingly ‘high-functioning’. It’s a new way of perceiving her and experiencing her. There is a lot of pain beneath the surface that she is just not dealing with. She’s always been very focused on her work, but that is even more the case now and she takes it to greater extremes.
“So she is quite cold, exacting and impatient, all of which she has been before, but now she is strictly that.
“There are little flickers of her vulnerability and humanity that surface, but she is not a lot of fun right now. I think she has not processed Brody’s death and that is a complex grief to experience because she was culpable and involved in that outcome. She led him to his death. So she feels a personal responsibility as well as profound loss and she has this kid whom she’s deposited with her sister and is barely able to face.
“Her work this season is to get to a point where she can make sense of her loss and accept her new reality as a mother and embrace her child. It takes a long time to get there and I think the writers were quite brave in not racing to that point and choosing to show her challenges. She is not portrayed in a very flattering light.
“At the same time, the plot is as thrilling and surprising as ever. The writers are such incredible craftsmen in terms of creating suspense. I am in constant awe of their ability to keep audiences so intensely engaged.”
On the status quo of her relationship with Saul Berenson, she reveals: “Well, he is now in the private sector so he is out of the game. I thought last season was really interesting in the way Saul was contextualised. Suddenly he was the boss and had to make really difficult decisions. He couldn’t afford to just be the avuncular, benevolent and liberal bleeding-hearted. He had to make more provocative choices and audiences struggled with that. They didn’t want to see him be something other than a lovely, paternal figure. But that is the reality of what it is to be a boss. I thought that was a brave choice from the writers again and he couldn’t maintain that position ultimately. He was too deep a thinker with too much conscience.
“We see him now on the outside and he misses it (the CIA). He pines for it. He is grumpy about the politics of it after dedicating most of his life and career to the CIA. He’s ambivalent about where he is now and we see him struggle with that. It’s a role reversal. Carrie is now in a position of authority and she is pretty good at it.”
With there being several directors involved with the show, Tonight asked Danes how it affects the tone of the narrative and depiction of the characters.
She responds: “Lesli Linka Glatter is our producer and director, so she directs four out of 12 episodes and oversees the directors she is hosting. It’s hugely important to have her guidance, especially now that we’re so far away from headquarters in LA. We were in Charlotte before, but the time difference and the commute now is rather extreme.
“We have a really strong rapport and I know her style. We’re great friends as well and that’s one of the things I love about television. You get to develop very deep working relationships. On a movie, you start to get a rhythm and you become fluent in the language and the culture you create and then it’s over. So you wonder, ‘well, what was all that for?’ Most of the directors this season I have worked with before. There are only two I have not worked with previously and that took some adjusting to, but it’s nice to have some variety.”
As for how closely the plot shadows current events and informs the characters, she shares: “That’s one of the great achievements of our writers, again. They are not only able to hold up a mirror to what is happening currently, but they also anticipate what is going to happen. The show is quite prescient in that respect. It remains relevant culturally and also manages to be neutral politically.
“Right now the show is focusing on the very complex, precarious relationship between the US and Pakistan. How we are allies and we are not, in some ways. It’s also true that we are withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and we have not resolved this war, but it’s time to end it. What does that mean? There are no obvious answers. It is a massive compromise with huge risks and we’re exploring that. Our world is suffering. There is a lot of distress and discord so it’s an anxious time and this show is admitting that.”
And her time in South Africa hasn’t been without a cultural induction either. Aside from tucking into the cuisine, she has picked up a bit of slang, too.
“I’m officially on a diet because the food here is so f*****g incredible. When I first got here, I was a little bit too excited about the food. Now I’m taking a pause before I head back out into Cape Town’s culinary world with the same commitment as when I first arrived.
“‘Sharp, sharp!’ – that’s my favourite phrase. I hope to incorporate that into my way of speaking when I leave here. It’s a very satisfying expression. I now know about the ‘just now, now-now and now’. I also like the ‘howzit’ greeting and people just randomly addressing each other as ‘boss’.
Easygoing, impressive and talented – Danes embodies traits that truly place her in a class of her own. It also talks to her magnetism as Carrie.
Enough said!
• Homeland airs on M-Net on Thursday at 9.30pm.