Claire Danes
Hits Home
Get the latest intel on Homeland’s pulse- pounding second season from the 2012 Best Actress winner herself.
Homeland © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Emmy is a registered trademark of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. SHOWTIME and related marks are trademarks of Showtime Networks Inc., a CBS Company.
Play trailer
Catch up on Homeland Seasons 1 and 2 on SHOWTIME ON DEMAND®. New episodes premiere every Sunday at 10pm ET/PT.
You want action? Smarts? Intrigue? Look no further than the SHOWTIME® Emmy® Award–winning series Homeland.
The zeitgeist series revolves around Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a driven CIA officer who suspects Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody has turned and is plotting an attack on the U.S. after going MIA in Iraq for eight years.
Here, Best Actress–winner Danes talks about her character, the show’s second edge-of-your-seat season, and where things are heading.
Where did we leave off last season?
So last season, Brody does attempt to blow up the vice president and all of his cronies but doesn’t succeed, mercifully. Carrie is vindicated, at least by the audience. But no one, including her, is aware of how right she was. And in fact, she sends herself to get electroshock therapy because she’s so concerned about her mental instability and, of course, as she’s going under, she flashes on an incredibly relevant piece of information that we know will probably be erased from her memory. It’s incredibly frustrating, but that’s where we ended.
And where do we pick up this season?
We find Carrie six months later. She’s undergone the full ECT therapy, has been hospitalized and released, and has been living with her sister. She has really finally accepted that she’s no longer going to be working for the CIA and is trying to restructure her life and live on a more manageable scale. She’s kind of cocooned herself and she is stable, but that mental stability is pretty fragile and tenuous. She gets a call from Saul saying that the CIA needs to recruit her for one mission. It’s very jarring and threatening because she’s just finally adapted to this new, quieter way of living and this does not factor into that plan.
What does Carrie need in her life to be happy?
Well, I think Carrie is trying to figure out what she needs in her life to be happy. That’s still something she’s actively kind of groping and searching for. In the immediate sense, she needs the stimulus to be at a low volume — certainly compared to what it had been. She had been, obviously, overwhelmed by the pressures of her work, which I think the most mentally robust would be. She needs routine, structure, and continuity, but, of course, her fate is going to be redirected once again. And those things are not going to be in great supply. But I think ultimately she realizes both extremes are not really sensible, realistic, or appropriate. She can’t deny her passion for her work. It’s kind of her reason for being. She has to reconcile managing her health and her calling, which is to perform her work in the CIA, which she’s so incredibly gifted at.
Tell me about her complex feelings for Brody.
Her feelings for Brody are really wildly elaborate and confusing. She doesn’t fully understand them herself. She discovers pretty soon into the second season that she had been right all along. I think that fills her with an enormous rage and intolerance of him. But I think the recognition that she found in him and the true love that they arrived at together is undeniable. So I think it’s going to be pretty mucky.
Which is going to be much more interesting this year…
Yeah.
So let’s talk about how authentic the show is. It really resonates with people, and the tagline this year “Homeland hits home.” Why do you feel that the show feels so real to people and that people have really grasped onto it?
It’s hard to answer that question. It’s really hard to say why it has resonated so loudly with audiences. I can only speak personally, and I’m very attracted to this show because of the speed and seductiveness of the plot. So much happens in so little time, and it’s incredibly gripping entertainment. It also features characters who are fully developed, really integrated, grounded, and dynamic — full of contradictions and conflict. It’s just very, very unusual to have that kind of heart-racing narrative and these really plausible, terribly compelling characters at the heart of it.
There’s been a lot of support from the mental health aspect that you’re playing a bipolar woman so accurately. Tell me a little bit about that.
Well, I take the subject of the bipolar condition incredibly seriously. I have enormous respect for it. The more I learn about it, the more respect I have. I have always been interested in the human psyche and these different mental states. It’s tricky, I have a lot of compassion for their suffering, but I also have learned that there are great gifts that come with that way of being and perceiving the world. I also was so heartened by the quality of the writing. Meredith Stiehm, one of our writers, has a very intimate relationship with what it is to be bipolar. Her sister is bipolar and she has just done such an exquisite job of representing that experience, so it was completely reflective of the research that I had done. It was very fluid and intuitive for me after a certain point. I really had to apply myself for a long time to get to that point, but it’s been fascinating.
Wow, so tell me what should audiences expect from Season 2 of Homeland?
Honestly, it’s hard to answer that question, because I’m not entirely sure. I think that the secrets the protagonist is concealing will become known. I think that the unanswered relationship between Carrie and Brody will become more fully realized. They’re going to arrive at some sense of closure.
Play episode
Exclusive! Watch Episode 1 of Season 2 in its entirety.
Catch up on Homeland Seasons 1 and 2 on SHOWTIME ON DEMAND®.
New episodes premiere every Sunday at 10pm ET/PT.