Damian Lewis Talks About Homeland

Actor Damian Lewis, the star of the new Showtime series, Homeland, stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about the new show, which is quickly becoming known as the most exciting show on television. Excerpts of that interview appear below.

Ron Bennington: The most intense tv show on today is definitely Homeland. Damian Lewis is in with us, and you’ve got a black eye, as if you’ve just been through some torture I don’t know about.

Damian Lewis: Danesy. Clair Danes. She gets angry and she wacks me. No, it’s my four year old. He threw Lightening McQueen at me yesterday morning just before I got on the plane to come here.

Ron Bennington: Well congratulations on the show. This tv show, to me is like one of the best movies of the year. Because it has the pacing and the feel like you’re watching a thriller.

Damian Lewis: I’m delighted to hear you say that. We saw the pilot on a big screen at the premier in the Hamptons. I watched an hour of it, and I thought oh I’ve got to go through eleven more of those? That was an intense psychological movie, and you’re right it is shot at that pace. And just from a slightly more technical point of view, the camera stays back a bit more than we’re used to in tv, and it let’s the whole thing breathe a bit. I’m delighted you picked up on that. That’s one of the reasons I love the way this show is coming out.

Ron Bennington: And your character of course, is at the center of this. It’s a guy that we root for, we fear, we sometimes dislike. You really don’t have the normal kind of center to a television show with this.

Damian Lewis: The two central strands of the show are Claire’s character, Carrie Matherson who is a CIA agent, and my character Nicholas Brody. My character represents a threat to homeland security. He might be about to do something devastating and violent and damaging. And yet he’s weirdly likeable because he himself is damaged. And he’s trying clearly to reintegrate with his family, reconnect with people in the world around him. And everyone can sympathize with a guy who…well, we don’t know what it’s like..but people can sympathize with a guy who has been in a hole for eight years. So there’s a lot of sympathy for him. Conversely, her character who is brilliant, and maverick and volatile and a little erratic at times, is charged with really saving America, perhaps. She’s the one person who seems to have a clue what’s going on. But she’s not immediately likeable.

Ron Bennington: No, she’s not always likeable, but she is….got the greater safety of the country. She’s obsessed with…this can never happen again.

Damian Lewis: And..she’s a little obsessive but she might be right. We don’t know that yet. Maybe she has lost the plot a little bit, but maybe Brody is going to do something devastating. I think in last week’s episode, what was revealed was that the motives for why he might act are not as clear cut as they were at the beginning of the series.

Ron Bennington: That’s the thing that, as a viewer, we’re not used to. That it’s way more complex than here’s some good guys, here’s some bad guys. Now…to know that the guy was a prisoner of war, tortured, in a hole, eight years….how do you even get down to try to understand what that’s like for someone?

Damian Lewis: There was an amazing book written about his time in Beirut in the eighties, by a guy called Brian Keenan, and it was called An Evil Cradling, and he was a teacher at university so he wrote this book beautifully. He was in captivity, it’s a very psychological re-telling of what it’s like to be in captivity with a terrorist group. I read that first, and then I spoke to one or two soldiers who had come home from war, what it’s like being away for long times from your family. Watched an extraordinary films, which actually was made by a friend of mine, Tim Heatherington, who sadly was the journalist who was killed in Libya recently, Restrepo, just to see– get any sort of documentary footage of what its like being soldiers out in combat zones and just try to immerse myself in that way of being and try to understand it.

Ron Bennington: You know, I read the John McCain book years ago. He was in Vietnam for so long, and you try to go…”oh could I as a person handle this.” And the truth is, no you will break.  The amazing stuff about McCain is, when he did things that he was ashamed of– when he felt like he broke–  to me it’s when he came across the most heroic, the most human. It’s just such a powerful thing to see how far a human can go, just to try to hold on to humanity.

Damian Lewis: I think this show explores that actually, militarily, personally and individually, domestically. Every character in the show has an extreme desire– has an extreme need. And every single character, arguably maybe not Saul, is compromised ethically by decisions they make because of how much they want something. That’s very representative of human nature, of our lives for all of us, what we do daily, weekly. Where you just go, oh you know I shouldn’t probably have done that.

Ron Bennington: But for you, you probably still don’t know Brody’s full motivation yet. Right? Like every week we learn more about him, so do they tell you early on, here’s exactly where the character is going to end up?

Damian Lewis: I’m an actor who likes to know the fundamentals because you need to have a sense of the arc of your character so you can start plotting your arc for yourself and do something that’s consistent and credible and hopefully interesting, but, I don’t need to know everything. I enjoy the novelistic approach to this kind of work. Which is every week I get handed a new episode and it’s like reading the next chapter of the book you’re reading before you go to sleep each night. You know, I love that. Oh, my holy crap….oh no! I’m gay, I had no idea! Just some amazing revelation. And I enjoy those moments. But Alex and Howard, the creators of the show are extremely collaborative, and have been happy to share things. I do actually know now what the motivation is. And the audience will have more of a sense of what Brody’s motivation is as well having seen last week’s episode. And there are going to be strong parallels with McCain’s career as well because Brody is going to be invited into political life, much like McCain was, albeit for a different party.

Ron Bennington: And the interesting thing there to is just the cynicism of political life, of, here’s this guy who people are attracted to, so let’s get him into a position where they can vote for him. It’s not even that Brody wanted this, it’s them going, you know people already like you, let’s move you over and then we’ll teach you how to do that position. It’s like any kind of celebrity.

Damian Lewis: You know there’s overwhelming evidence that we vote for personalities, don’t we? And let’s hear what their policies are like later. We voted for Obama, and…probably there are six of us in this room, probably all with different politics. But there’s been a disappointment about the way that he’s effected some of his policies, but we vote for personalities. We vote for the most impressive candidate.

Ron Bennington: For Homeland, the news could change your show in a second too. Something could come up where suddenly plot lines would seem ridiculous so you guys have to be ready to move all the time.

Damian Lewis: There was a fascinating moment just before we started filming the season– that Osama was killed. The creators of the show were going, oh my Christ, that’s ruined the show! Where did our threat go! But of course the reality of the world, post 9-11 and why this show is so timely, is that even though great inroads have been made into Al Qaeda, and we have fractured Al Qaeda, these rogue isolated groups have sprung up. Just as dangerous, more hidden, and they’re attacking in different countries randomly. The threat is still there and is still present. They really used it and it was a fantastic opportunity to make the show even more current. I think in episode two or episode three, someone goes, “well, Bin Laden is dead.”

Ron Bennington: It’s the see saw too between security and freedom. It’s a terrific show. Homeland on Showtime, Sunday nights at 10pm, and if you haven’t seen the show yet you can go over to Showtime and just watch it straight through on Showtime on Demand as a movie right now and catch right up with it. Thanks for coming in, Damian Lewis.

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This interview can be heard in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free seven day trial subscription.

Follow Homeland on twitter at @SHO_Homeland or check out their official website.