Damian Lewis
Actor, Dad, Redhead, and Ping Pong Champion
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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

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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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Homeland Overhauled – Feb 28, 2018

Six Shows That Were Seriously Overhauled After Their Stars Left

by Sam Ashurst & Morgan Jeffery | Digital Spy | February 28, 2018

If it’s broke, try to fix it. No one can do the same job forever, and actors are more keen to stretch their legs than most – doing different things is basically the job description. But sometimes telly shows want to carry on after their star leaves, going to drastic lengths to extend their shelf life.

Here’s some shows that managed to survive losing their star, thanks to some major plot overhauls.

Damian Lewis – Homeland

Source: Showtime

Damian Lewis was very much at the heart of Homeland when it started out – the first season was all about the investigation into his character Nick Brody, a US marine who’d been corrupted by terrorists, while the second run saw him exposed as a traitor and explored his redemption.

Come the third season, though, it was clear that the show’s writers were running out of things to do with him. Lewis appeared in just half of that year’s 12 episodes as a fugitive Brody, before Homeland took the bold decision to kill him off.

Continue reading Homeland Overhauled – Feb 28, 2018

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A Forensic Analysis of Homeland – Feb 8, 2018

Homeland: Is the CIA Drama Actually Any Good? (A Forensic Investigation)

by Gavin Haynes | The Guardian | February 8, 2018

Source: Showtime – Photo: Everett/Rex Features

We armed our writer with some DVDs and a few cups of coffee and he came back with a definitive answer to one of TV’s biggest unanswered questions. Homeland is famous for two things: Claire Danes’ capacity to act by wobbling her face, and being maddeningly uneven. Terrorists come and go: who could tell a Bibi Hamed from a Saad Massoud in the long game? But inconsistency remains. So as the show resumes later this month, when you look at it across six seasons, is Homeland actually any good? The question has never quite been resolved. Until now. Six seasons, one metric. Goodness.

Season One

UPSIDE

What’s striking now about Homeland’s debut is how slow it is. Rather than what it became – a frantic hail of bullets falling amid a fog of sarin gas – this is a psychological turn about the alienation of a returning PoW.

DOWNSIDE

A climax that’s a touch random. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) attempts to turn the vice president into strawberry jam with his suicide vest, before mammalian evolutionary programming saves the day, via a last-minute phone call from his teenage daughter – as if The Godfather climaxed with the Monty Python foot coming down on Michael Corleone.

Verdict: 57% good

Continue reading A Forensic Analysis of Homeland – Feb 8, 2018

Categories Homeland Video

Damian Lewis Reminisces About Quick Stint on Homeland – Feb 19, 2015

Four Days for Season Four

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | February 19, 2015

Damian talks about his cameo appearance in Season 4 of Homeland. Looks like this was filmed while promoting Wolf Hall at the Winter TCA Tour.

Categories Billions Homeland Interviews Media Print Media Wolf Hall

After “Homeland,” Damian Lewis Looked To His Past To Plan His Future

Damian at the 2015 TCA Winter Press Tour

The Homeland alum relied on two decades of invaluable Hollywood lessons to tackle lead roles in a pair of new television projects, BBC Two’s period drama Wolf Hall and Showtime’s high-finance pilot Billions.

When Damian Lewis faced the press on Jan. 19, for the first time since he was killed off Showtime’s Homeland in December 2013, the 43-year-old still bore an uncanny resemblance to Sgt. Nicholas Brody, thanks to his close-cropped hair, rigid posture, and clean-shaven face. But it quickly became clear that, on the inside, he couldn’t be more different than the man who signed on to the series in 2011.

Thanks to Homeland, Lewis — who calls himself an “autodidact” — was afforded some incredibly unique learning experiences. “I love doing projects where there’s something to be learned,” Lewis told BuzzFeed News, sitting at the far end of a long, empty dining room table of an ornate hotel conference room in Pasadena, California. To properly bring Brody to life, he studied the Qur’an and learned about the Islamic faith and the experiences of U.S. Marines deployed in Afghanistan. “The wonderful thing about acting is you can be on a 40-year university course.”

But Lewis has also grown through the wisdom gleaned from his own professional mistakes — again, most recently through his role on Homeland, for which he won an Emmy Award in 2012.

Lewis’ character, Nicholas Brody — an American prisoner of war who was rescued and returned home a changed man (not so spoiler alert: He was a sleeper agent for the enemy) — was not designed to remain on the series indefinitely. But when the show clicked with critics and fans took a shine to Brody’s burgeoning relationship with CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), the creators’ initial plan was scrapped. But by the third season, many viewers had grown weary of the duo’s increasingly operatic romantic entanglements and the character was, as initially planned, killed off in a brutal and shocking death scene.

“He had to go,” Lewis said, without hesitation. “When I took the show, I was really of the understanding I would only be there for two years. I stayed for a third season because TV rollover came into play: ‘This is our show and we can’t get rid of him.’ I think the one area of the story the writers weren’t clear would work was this relationship. So when it worked, they were ambushed by success of that central storyline and they had a problem because people were now tuning in to see this relationship.

“We set out to make a different drama: a show about the flawed characters at the center of a flawed central intelligence agency that is protecting the interests of a flawed country in the name of a flawed idea — which is called democracy — against a bunch of radical, violent people. This was our big central idea and [then we had] people tuning because they want to see if these people are going to get together or not.”

A Brody-less Season 4 of Homeland premiered in October 2014 to promising reviews, as hopeful critics noted the show looked to be returning to its roots. That promise paid off — in spades — as Homeland experienced a complete creative resurrection. “I think they did a brilliant job of just extricating themselves, tiptoeing away from the situation,” Lewis said of the fourth season, which went on to earn rave reviews. “What they’ve been able to do in Season 4 is get back to the nuts and bolts of the CIA and this great, brilliant, flawed character, the manic-depressive at the center of it all.”

Homeland’s presence is still felt in Lewis’ life. “It can be aggressive, that kind of adulation,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “People can go a little bit crazy, so there’s quite a lot of manhandling in the streets. Now I know what it must have been like to be Brad Pitt for an entire lifetime, ever since he did that scene in Thelma and Louise where he took his top off — I’m straight and that scene did it for me as well. There’s a very small group of people who have lived at that elevation and at times it was overwhelming, but I’ve enjoyed slightly calmer waters subsequently.”

Continue reading After “Homeland,” Damian Lewis Looked To His Past To Plan His Future

Categories Billions Homeland Media Print Media Wolf Hall

After “Homeland,” Damian Lewis Looked To His Past To Plan His Future, Buzzfeed, January 20, 2015

After “Homeland,” Damian Lewis Looked To His Past To Plan His Future

The Homeland alum relied on two decades of invaluable Hollywood lessons to tackle lead roles in a pair of new television projects, BBC Two’s period drama Wolf Hall and Showtime’s high-finance pilot Billions.

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Emmys: ‘Homeland’s’ Damian Lewis on Brody’s Brutal End and Viewers’ Reactions (Q&A), The Hollywood Reporter, June 2, 2014

Emmys: ‘Homeland’s’ Damian Lewis on Brody’s Brutal End and Viewers’ Reactions (Q&A)

9:00 AM PDT 6/2/2014 by Ray Richmond

Showtime, Damian Lewis on “Homeland’

The actor reflects on the demise of his controversial character, the show’s passionate fan base and the thrill of playing “a baddie.”

Continue reading Emmys: ‘Homeland’s’ Damian Lewis on Brody’s Brutal End and Viewers’ Reactions (Q&A), The Hollywood Reporter, June 2, 2014

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‘Homeland’ Star Damian Lewis Says No Finale Could Have Pleased All Fans, The Hollywood Reporter, December 18, 2013

‘Homeland’ Star Damian Lewis Says No Finale Could Have Pleased All Fans

by Michael O’Connell

"For some, he was one of the main reasons to tune in to the show," the actor tells THR. "But for other people, he was the reason the show couldn't grow."
Showtime
Damian Lewis
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‘Homeland’: Damian Lewis talks about finale tragedy, Entertainment Weekly, December 17, 2013

‘Homeland’: Damian Lewis talks finale tragedy

Homeland 312

Damian Lewis is breaking his silence on the season 3 finale of Showtime’s Homeland. Below, the Emmy-winning actor says goodbye to Nicholas Brody, his popular Homeland starring character who was executed in a public square in Tehran during the show’s last episode of the season Sunday night. Lewis reveals what it was like to shoot his agonizing last scene, what he thinks Brody was thinking in those final moments and his feelings about the show’s future without him.
Continue reading ‘Homeland’: Damian Lewis talks about finale tragedy, Entertainment Weekly, December 17, 2013

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Damian Lewis on the Season Finale of ‘Homeland’, New York Times, December 16, 2013

 Damian Lewis on the Season Finale of ‘Homeland’ (Spoiler Alert!)

Dave Itzkoff, New York Times, December 16, 2013

Nicholas Brody, the Marine and prisoner of war turned sleeper agent turned congressman played by Damian Lewis on “Homeland,” was all but a ghost in the most recent season of this Showtime thriller. Having gone on the run at the end of Season 2, Brody was largely absent from Season 3 — except for one episode, in which he resurfaced in Caracas, Venezuela — and then in the year’s final arc, he proceeded to make up for lost time.

Continue reading Damian Lewis on the Season Finale of ‘Homeland’, New York Times, December 16, 2013

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Damian Lewis Examines Homeland Season 3, AssignmentX, November 10, 2013

Interview: Damian Lewis examines HOMELAND Season 3

The actor talks about how he views Brody – and what HOMELAND has in common with Shakespeare

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Contributing Writer
Posted: November 10th, 2013 / 10:34 AM

Damian Lewis in HOMELAND – Season 3 | ©2013 Showtime/Kent Smith

Damian Lewis in HOMELAND - Season 3 | ©2013 Showtime/Kent SmithBritish actor Damian Lewis won an Emmy for his first season as prisoner-of-war-turned-terrorist/Congressional candidate Nicholas Brody in Showtime’s CIA thriller HOMELAND, which airs Sundays at 9 PM. Lewis was nominated again for his second year on HOMELAND, when Congressman Brody is proved to be a terrorist by CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes, who won Emmys for both seasons), then is turned into a double agent by the CIA, then resumes his affair with the very conflicted Carrie, then is apparently framed for blowing up the CIA and ends the second season on the run.
Continue reading Damian Lewis Examines Homeland Season 3, AssignmentX, November 10, 2013