'Homeland': A terrorist who earns our sympathy

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'Homeland': A terrorist who earns our sympathy

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No TV drama has ever given viewers such a pair of protagonists as Brody and Carrie on Homeland.

27 September,2012 07:56 pm

Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody was a prisoner of war in Afghanistan who returned home a national hero and, covertly, a terrorist turncoat (having been turned by Al-Qaida during his 8-year imprisonment).Carrie Mathison was a CIA agent whose obsessive inability to prove Brodys betrayal, coupled with her bipolar disorder, led to her dismissal from the agency and a mental breakdown.During this Showtime series gripping first season, Carrie and Brody played a cat-and-mouse game of global intrigue, swapping roles as one, then the other, seemed to gain the upper hand. Along the way, they had a brief, tumultuous love affair.On Sunday at 10 p.m. EDT, Homeland begins its second season, boasting a haul of Emmys that includes the best drama award and trophies for best actress and actor for stars Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.Six months after last seasons action, Brody is a newly elected U.S. congressman and a prospective vice presidential candidate still in thrall to al-Qaida. Carrie now works as a teacher and continues her recovery, still reeling from her painful conclusion that Brody was innocent all along.The writers have carried off this trick havent they? of creating two engaging anti-heroes, says Lewis during a recent interview.Speaking as if an audience member, he sums up the shows shrewd symmetry: Carrie Mathison can save us, and we WANT her to save us. But her illness and her ambition at times creates a self-absorbed monster who will stop at nothing just to achieve her goals.Brody, on the other hand, is barely defensible because of his endless lying and the fact that he represents such danger. But theres sympathy for him, because hes a victim as well.Sympathy For the man who, only at the last second stunned by a plaintive phone call from his daughter scrapped his plot to assassinate a room full of government bigwigs with his suicide vest bomb. Instead, he returned home to his loving wife and two kids, still committed to the cause and beyond redemption, and with no one the wiser.Hes developed sociopathic tendencies and an ability to compartmentalize his life: He can be one person in one situation, another person in another situation, says Lewis, looking pleased. For an actor, that kind of ambiguity and complexity is tremendous fun.Before Homeland, the London-born Lewis, 41, was known for his role as an American war hero in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers as well as for the remake of The Forsyte Saga and the NBC whodunit Life.Clad casually this day in knit shirt, jeans and running shoes, Lewis is in New York on a brief break from shooting Homeland in North Carolina. He is joined by his wife, actress Helen McCrory, with whom he has a young son and daughter.Lewis in person is charming, with a gift for mimickry (during the interview, he does a spot-on impersonation of Michael Caine, as well as of his own makeup artist in a rant about how Brody, the liar, is the sort of guy no girl would ever want to date) and possessing a certain prep-school polish (the word whilst rolls off his tongue).And, of course, he is leading-man handsome, with ginger-red hair and penetrating blue eyes he puts to good use as Brody. But beyond his status as a heartthrob, Lewis is rightly hailed for the precision of his acting as, on Homeland, he juggles Brodys many personalities and moods within a narrowly defined emotional range.Lewis insists he was surprised to land an Emmy for his work.There were more reasons not to win than there were for me to win, he says, among them popular rivals in the category such as oft-awarded Bryan Cranston and perenially jilted Jon Hamm. Im over the moon.I was so thrilled to see him win, said Homeland executive producer Alex Ganza from Los Angeles the day after Emmys were bestowed. Claires performance gets to be wonderfully operatic, but Damian has to exist in those small margins at the edge of his behavior, and hes so restrained.That wasnt the case in Lewis early acting career, when most of what he did was theater.I felt then that I might never be a screen actor, because I was big and expressive on stage, says Lewis. But I made a conscious decision to shrink my performance, make it less expansive, and to internalize everything as deep inside as I possibly could.That concentrated power has paid off big-time on Homeland, helping make Brody seem indispensable when, initially, he was living on borrowed time.The producers at first had seen Brody as a secondary figure who might not last past Season 1.But as we fleshed out the middle part of the season, we began to see the magic when Claire and Damian were on-screen together, said Ganza. It was if the word Chemistry was flashing on the screen. So what we had thought was a series about a CIA officer chasing terrorists was something quite different: It was a dance between these two characters.I truly believe its this dance, this doomed love affair between Brody and Carrie, that has captured peoples interest, Ganza said.They are hooked into each other, Lewis agrees. The damage he can do to Carrie is on a personal, emotional level. So even if Brody no longer is a central threat to homeland security, he can possibly survive in the series just being terribly destructive to Carrie.