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

Categories Homeland Interviews Media Print Media

More ‘Homeland’ Interviews

Damian Lewis in Homeland 3x03
 

Brody is finally back on “Homeland” — and as star Damian Lewis promised, it was a devastating reveal — but will he ever really be back?

We caught up with Lewis to discuss “Homeland” Season 3, Episode 3, “Tower of David,” this week’s “very sad episode,” and whether or not Brody can cheat certain death once again to make it back to his old life — and back to sharing screentime with his partner in drugged-and-imprisoned crime Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and his family, including troubled daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor).

Keep reading for Lewis’ take on this latest twist, including his pessimistic outlook on Brody’s current state (“I don’t see Brody coming out of hell”) and his optimistic prediction about an inevitable reunion for Brody with both Carrie and Dana before this season is over.

Welcome back! We went from zero Brody to almost all Brody this episode — you promised that Brody’s reveal would be “devastating,” but was this one of the more grueling hours to shoot for you?
[Laughs.] Everyone keeps saying that. It was hot and dusty and perilous sometimes — it felt that way because we were quite high up in the abandoned building — but I have to say, you go into acting hoping that you get the opportunities to make episodes like that. It felt like a small movie, and a self-contained story. It really was great fun.

A small, very bloody, very violent, very drug-fueled movie … there’s a lot.
Yeah, there’s a lot, but you know … we know the “Homeland” viewers can take it. We’re not expecting the nuns at the convent to tune in to watch it. We know who’s going to come and watch the show, and hopefully it’ll be people who can stomach that kind of thing.

It’s a devastating personal trajectory for Brody. He has been blown from pillar to post. He’s like a tumbleweed. He’s a servant of so many masters, and has been ever since he was captured and tortured seven or eight years ago by Abu Nazir. So, you know, the culmination of his whole story is really in that moment when he picks up that needle and he sticks it in his arm. I think it’s just a cry for stillness and peace, and just a desire to stop running. He’s a guy who’s running on empty now, and it’s a real sadness.

You know, the broader political message is: Don’t send young men to war. Obviously “Homeland” is a fictional world, and we extrapolate from that and he’s gone on a pretty remarkable journey since then [laughs] … but he is a man who has had his identity taken away from him, and he really doesn’t know who he is anymore. He hasn’t known who he is for a long, long time. And he wakes up in this derelict tower, and now he doesn’t know where he is, and I just think he wants a moment of peace. I think it’s a very sad episode.

 

Read the full interview at The Huffington Post

 

More Homeland 3×03 interviews:

The Hollywood Reporter – ‘Homeland’: Damian Lewis Talks Brody’s Return, Rock Bottom and TV Fatherhood
WSJ – Damian Lewis Reveals Some of the Secrets of ‘Homeland’
A.V. Club – Damian Lewis on Brody’s life as a fugitive
HitFix – ‘Homeland’ star Damian Lewis on Brody’s return and continued survival

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Damian Lewis Reveals Some of the Secrets of ‘Homeland’, WSJ, Speakeasy, October 14, 2013

Damian Lewis Reveals Some of the Secrets of ‘Homeland’

by John Jurgensen, Speakeasy, WSJ, October 14, 2013

KENT SMITH/SHOWTIME

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Damian Lewis as Nicholas “Nick” Brody in “Homeland.”After being absent from the first two episodes of this season’s “Homeland,” Damian Lewis‘s character Nicholas Brody anchored Sunday’s installment, titled “Tower of David.” In a telephone interview, Lewis discussed the strange setting of the episode, the clues it offers to the broader story, and the sorry state of his character, who spends most of the episode in wrenching physical and mental pain.

The fugitive Brody arrives in Venezuela, bleeding from a bullet wound he somehow suffered along the way. He finds himself in a high-rise slum in Caracas, known as the Tower of David after the financier David Brillembourg who originally funded the incomplete skyscraper that was eventually populated by squatters. A gang who lords over the community–and who has a mysterious link to Carrie Mathison–saves Brody’s life but also holds him prisoner. Meanwhile, Carrie is trapped in a limbo of her own in a mental hospital thousands of miles away.

Where was this episode shot?

We were in Puerto Rico. Amazingly, the building was found by a producer who just typed into Google “abandoned building in San Juan,” and this thing came up that looks not dissimilar to the Tower of David in Caracas. We found a shorter version of it, and special effects took care of the rest. Everything you see in it was dressed by the art department and made to look like a functioning slum run by gangs.
Continue reading Damian Lewis Reveals Some of the Secrets of ‘Homeland’, WSJ, Speakeasy, October 14, 2013

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Damian Lewis on Brody’s Life as a Fugitive, AV Club, October 14, 2013

Damian Lewis on Brody’s Life as a Fugitive

by Sonia Saraiya, AV Club, October 14, 2013

The biggest question of Homeland’s third season has been: What about Brody? It seemed like the show had written itself into an impossible situation, porting its main character to fugitive status in the hinterlands of the modern world, while the rest of its characters meandered on in Langley. Homeland has given itself a staggering task in trying to knit together the stories of its star-crossed lovers, Carrie and Brody, while keeping the taut psychological tension of the show running smoothly. Showcasing the Emmy-winning performance of Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody can’t hurt. Last night’s episode, “Tower Of David,”finally brought Lewis back to Homeland, showing us a beleaguered character. He is essentially a prisoner of a Venezuelan gang, and in the episode’s final moments, we see him turning to heroin as a means of escape. Brody’s alive, but in dire straits; as far as dark episodes go, it’s one of the darkest. We spoke to Damian Lewis about Brody’s dark night of the soul, as well as how victimhood and redemption are going to play out for his character.

Continue reading Damian Lewis on Brody’s Life as a Fugitive, AV Club, October 14, 2013

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

‘Homeland’ star Damian Lewis on Brody’s return, Uproxx October 13, 2013

‘Homeland’ star Damian Lewis on Brody’s return

Alan Sepinwall, Uproxx, October 13, 2013
Damian Lewis made his first appearance of “Homeland” season 3 in tonight’s episode, “Tower of David,” which I reviewed here. On Friday, I spoke briefly with the show’s Emmy-winning leading man about where exactly he and Brody find themselves at this stage, and how much life he thinks the character has left in him.

As you were coming to the end of season 2 and Brody was about to become the world’s most wanted fugitive, what sorts of conversations did you have with the producers about what your role on the show would be going forward?

Continue reading ‘Homeland’ star Damian Lewis on Brody’s return, Uproxx October 13, 2013

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

‘Homeland’: Damian Lewis Talks Brody’s Return, Rock Bottom and TV Fatherhood, Hollywood Reporter, October 13, 2013

‘Homeland’: Damian Lewis Talks Brody’s Return, Rock Bottom and TV Fatherhood

The actor tells THR about his alter ego's increasingly rough road: "For the amount of crying we've been doing for three years…the amount of times I've been pissed on and beaten up naked in showers, I actually should look quite a lot older."
Showtime
Damian Lewis
Categories Homeland Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Damian Lewis: “The Homeland Writers are Desperate to kill Brody”, The Guardian, October 12, 2013

Damian Lewis: ‘The Homeland writers are desperate to kill Brody’

As Homeland returns to our screens, the actor talks about failure, family, being caned at school – and his future on the hit TV show
Damian Lewis
Damian Lewis: ‘I worried I would be one of those fruity, over-the-top actors who start playing wizards when they’re 50.’ Photograph: Andrew Woffinden for the Guardian. Click on image for full portrait

Continue reading Damian Lewis: “The Homeland Writers are Desperate to kill Brody”, The Guardian, October 12, 2013