Damian Lewis: Homeland has excelled because it reflects political reality
Metro,co.uk, Oct 5, 2012
British actor Damian Lewis, 41, plays Nicholas Brody in Homeland. He talks to Metro about why he thinks the show has done so well and his encounter with Barack Obama . Damian Lewis has been sworn to secrecy when it comes to the second series of Homeland.
Your Homeland character, Nicholas Brody, has been through a lot: kidnapping, eight years held hostage by al-Qaeda, post-traumatic stress disorder. What research did you do?
An Evil Cradling, by Brian Keenan , about his four years in captivity in Beirut in the 1980s is still the best book on the subject, so I read that again. And I watched Restrepo, the documentary which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance a couple of years ago. I found it to be a very moving and accurate depiction of boys just stuck in war. When they are asked to articulate their feelings, they can’t, they are constipated – it has all been drummed out of them. And that is what, of course, creates all the trauma. There is also a unit out in Gloucester, where soldiers are able to go for therapy and I talked to a couple of people there, which was hugely helpful.
How did you approach the controversial issue of Brody’s conversion to Islam?
I befriended Muslim people both in London and the US who have been very helpful and have welcomed me into their mosques and invited me to join and observe prayer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Islamic PR machine is working overtime at the moment, so you are incredibly welcome in all of these places. When I took on the role, I was very clear that if there were going to be easy parallels drawn between Islam and violence, I wasn’t interested in telling that story. It’s not a fair reflection of what is going on for the majority of people and I felt that would be irresponsible. And I think the show has worked really hard for the Islamic faith to be portrayed as a nurturing, sustaining force for good for Brody, and to show that Allah was a salvation for him while he was being brutalised.
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You previously played another US soldier, in Band Of Brothers. Are there any similarities between Brody and your character in that show, Dick Winters?
Dick Winters was a man defined by his actions in the field of combat – much more than by what he said. He was very economic with his words and language. It’s far less important that Brody is a soldier – what is more important is this man’s disintegration and uncertainty about his place in the world, the way in which an experience has changed him and changed the way in which he views the world around him.
Why do you think Homeland has been so successful?
Of course everyone likes the edge-of-your-seat thriller aspect of it but the reason it isn’t cartoonish and hasn’t become James Bond-like – though I love James Bond, of course – is because that action is grounded in a political reality. Brody is brought back and has to deal with the very real issues of returning to his family, integrating with them and learning how to be intimate with his wife again. I think that grounds the show, and I think it is what people have responded to. And those sort of relationships you see unfolding in the Brody household, we are surrounded by them down in North Carolina where we film the show. We are surrounded by families with young boys coming back from war – or not.
Where do you think Homeland sits, politically?
I think it is a very liberal view of our involvement in Iraq and then, latterly, Afghanistan. And, yet, it uses the conventional Republican machinery of the CIA, of espionage, establishing at every level a culture of secrecy, lies and duplicity – which is the spy world – and it at least proposes that it is these people, involved with that, who are tasked with protecting us from the ‘bad guys’. The obvious bad guy – Abu Nasir – is certainly a Muslim, a radicalised jihadist. But there is also a vice-president who behaves unethically, too, so it posits the idea that our own nation states and governments have committed terrorist acts as well.
You recently met Barack Obama, who is apparently a big fan of the show, at the White House. What did he say to you?
I was on a table at a White House dinner with Obama and I asked him how he had time to watch TV when he was supposed to be running the free world. Obama said: ‘Well, Michelle takes the girls out to play tennis on a Saturday afternoon. I pretend I’m going to work in the Oval Office and I turn on the TV in my office and watch Homeland.’ I also got involved in a three-way discussion about energy policy with the president and Warren Buffet, which was quite illuminating. They are all very excited about natural gas over there. And then, of course, I shared my economic policy ideas with him.
In season one, Brody and Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) were embroiled in a rather dangerous sexual relationship. Will we see more of that this time round?
We are sworn to absolute secrecy when it comes to plots but I think Carrie and Brody will always be drawn to each other. They are both people who have conditions – he has post-traumatic stress disorder and she is bipolar – there is an unhealthy co-dependency there. Homeland is on Channel 4 on Sundays
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