“Homeland” was the breakout hit of last season, and for good reason. With a thrill-ride first season full of huge cliffhangers, high stakes and Emmy-worthy performances across the board, “Homeland” Season 2 (premieres Sun., Sept. 30, 10 p.m. ET on Showtime) is easily one of the most anticipated returning shows of the fall.
I caught up with star Damian Lewis, whose character Sgt. Nicholas Brody terrified us all with his flashbacks to the war and late-night meetings, then made us forget about his evil intentions with sexy trysts and a weekend away with CIA agent Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes), the woman determined to prove he was working for the enemy.
Season 2 picks up several months after Season 1 ended — when Carrie’s realization about Brody’s connection to Abu Nazir and his son Isa was seemingly erased by her electroconvulsive therapy — and finds Brody now a sitting Congressman, working frighteningly close to the people he’s determined to take down.
Lewis talked about all the awards love for the show and also teased what Brody and Carrie’s inevitable reunion will look like. He discussed how Brody’s home life has changed now that he’s in office, and previewed a very “gothic … operatic” episode this season that sounds like a game-changer for the troubled Congressman. Keep reading for more …
You’ve been acting for so long, but aside from a Golden Globe nomination for “Band of Brothers,” “Homeland” is giving you your first real American awards push with a Golden Globe nomination and now the Emmys love. Is it a strange new world, or are you enjoying it all?
It’s absolutely lovely. I don’t find it strange at all — I just feel incredibly lucky. And also at the same time a little bit smug because a lot of hard work paid off. That the show was a success so immediately I think it surprised us all. It was right out of the gates, everyone was talking about it. It just turns out that, in the same way that people love horror movies, to go and be scared, people also love to sit down and be made to feel really f—ing anxious and sweaty-palmed and slightly uneasy on a Sunday night. It’s an odd sort of connection you can have with your television box, but I think this is basically just an interesting story really well told. That’s a bland response, but that’s what it is.But I think that maybe on a more subliminal level, people do still feel that we could get blown up at any moment, and so the thought that it might be one of your own that’s about to do it … I mean, it’s not a long way from what happened in Aurora, Colorado. The guy walking in and just mowing people down … it’s unthinkable. Here, this guy goes away to war, is affected by his experiences in war and comes back and might do something equally atrocious. I think people are gripped by that possibility.
Read the full interview at TheHuffingtonPost.com.