Damian Lewis
Actor, Dad, Redhead, and Ping Pong Champion
Categories Homeland Print Media

Homeland Series Finale Acknowledges Brody – April 26, 2020

Arm in Arm in Espionage: Series Finale Recap

by Bill Keveney | USA Today | April 26, 2020

When “Homeland” grabbed the public’s attention and six Emmys, including best drama series, for its spellbinding first season in 2011, the relationship between CIA super spy Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and military hero and suspected terrorist  Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) took center stage.

Over eight seasons, many ups and some downs and the death of Brody in Season 3,  the central dynamic shifted to Carrie, a brilliant operative struggling with mental illness, and her savvy CIA mentor, Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin).

That bond frayed at times, as Carrie broke every rule in the book twice, but never has it been as endangered as it was going into the series’ final episode, which aired Sunday, after Russian agent Yevgeny Gromov (Costa Ronin) gave Carrie only one way to secure the black box flight recorder, evidence that can prevent a possible nuclear war: “Kill Saul.”

Here’s how the finale played out:

Continue reading Homeland Series Finale Acknowledges Brody – April 26, 2020

Categories Homeland Print Media

Homeland Declassified: An Oral History of Never Told Tales – Jan 16, 2020

Battles, Backlash, CIA Meetings

by Michael O’Connell | Hollywood Reporter | January 16, 2019

Claire Danes, Mandy Patinkin, Damian Lewis and the creators of the era-defining Showtime drama — now entering its eighth and final season — reveal in The Hollywood Reporter’s oral history never-told tales of a show that smashed records, captivated presidents and predicted everything from terrorist attacks to Russian election hacks.

“What keeps you up at night?” That’s the question Homeland showrunner Alex Gansa annually posed to Washington insiders before putting fingers to keyboard on a season of his Emmy-winning Showtime drama.

What began as a slick spy thriller driven by a potent sexual chemistry, courtesy of leads Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, evolved into an exposé on the greatest dangers to an America that finally had some distance from 9/11. Threats from ISIS, the surveillance state and Russian interference punctuated clandestine meetings with the intelligence community — part of a yearly writers and cast symposium in D.C. affectionately dubbed “Spy Camp.”

The series, loosely developed from an Israeli format by Gansa and longtime collaborator Howard Gordon (24), became an instant and bona fide success when it premiered in 2011 to 2.8 million viewers and unanimous critical acclaim. Boasting a murderers’ row of writers, each a showrunner at one time, the drama catapulted Showtime and studio Fox 21 to an echelon of prestige TV they previously couldn’t reach. It swept its first Emmys (with six awards total) and those first seasons had both the Obamas and Clintons soliciting screeners.

Continue reading Homeland Declassified: An Oral History of Never Told Tales – Jan 16, 2020

Categories Homeland Magazine Poll Print Media

Five Star-Crossed TV Lovers That Make Our Hearts Hurt – Oct 2, 2018

Love Conquers All…Right?

by Helen Whitaker | Cosmopolitan | October 2, 2018

“You and meee could write a bad romance,” sang Lady Gaga. And anyone who’s fallen for the wrong person – again and again – can relate. While this can suck IRL, on TV, the against-all-odds couple is irresistible. Inspired by the forbidden passion in our new TV obsession, here are five of our favourite star-crossed couples.

Homeland: Carrie and Brody

You’re a troubled CIA workaholic who finally meets the perfect guy and he turns out to be married with kids. Oh, and a recently-released military hostage who may or may not be a terrorist. But somehow, between the cat and mouse chase, Claire Danes’ award-winning cry-face and Damian Lewis’s double (and then triple) agent duplicity, we were rooting for the effed-up duo… for a while. While clandestine romance can be addictive, there’s only so many dates in secret grubby bunkers a girl can take.

Read the rest of the original article at Cosmopolitan

Categories Homeland Print Media

6 Fantastic Foreign Shows Remade in America – June 29, 2018

Homeland – Prisoners of War

by Brigid Brown | BBC America Anglophenia | June 29, 2018

It’s not just the British who love to remake fabulous foreign language shows, in English and subtitle-free, for their own audience. U.S. networks are just as into it. Did you know some of your U.S. favorites started life somewhere else?

Here are six TV series from around the globe, just so good they were remade in America:

1. Homeland (Israel)

Showtime’s critically-acclaimed series Homeland, now in its seventh season, is based on the Israeli series, Prisoners of War. The original (2009-2012) revolves around three Israeli soldiers (Yoram Toledo, Ishai Golan, Assi Cohen) who are released after 17 years in captivity. As they work to settle back into the lives they once knew, the military assigned psychiatrist picks up on discrepancies in the soldiers’ stories, resulting in an investigation. The first season of the U.S. version kicked off with a similar storyline, but revolved around only one POW (Damian Lewis), who returned home a hero. In this version, it’s CIA Operative Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) who picks up on unsettling behavior.

Read the rest of the original article at BBC America

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Damian Lewis: Making it Big on Small Screen, The Irish Examiner, October 14, 2012

Making it big on the small screen

It’s been a slow and steady rise to stardom for Damian Lewis. But now he’s hit the jackpot with an Emmy win for his role in Homeland. He talks to Craig McLean about fame, fatherhood and fan clubs.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Making it Big on Small Screen, The Irish Examiner, October 14, 2012

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Damian Lewis: ‘You know you’ve hit the zeitgeist when Obama is your number one fan’, Evening Standard, April 2, 2012

Damian Lewis: ‘You know you’ve hit the zeitgeist when Obama is your number one fan’

The star of Sunday night’s most addictive drama, talks to Craig McLean about playing a Muslim, living between LA and London and why he couldn’t say no to Homeland

CRAIG MCLEAN
Monday 2 April 2012 11:01