Carrie on Homeland
Back as tortured spook Carrie Mathison in series six of the spy thriller, Claire Danes tells how the intensity of the show is good for her marriage – and says ‘roll on series seven’
One thing about Carrie Mathison, says Claire Danes, is that she never gets bored with her. ‘Every year she’s different,’ says Claire of the tortured bipolar CIA agent she’s been playing for six years in the awards-laden espionage thriller Homeland. ‘Every year we’re in a new environment, facing different circumstances – and every year we unveil a new dimension to Carrie’s character. It’s remained very fresh and I’m both surprised and relieved to find I feel as challenged to play her now as I did during the first series. I’d so much rather be challenged than bored.’
She’s not kidding about the variety. In the past six years she’s seen Carrie deal with family dramas, professional betrayals, her own mental issues, the public hanging of her former lover, motherhood (which she’s not very good at) and ever higher stakes on issues of international security. It’s no wonder she joked to me last year that ‘I’m ready to do a comedy now!’
There’s no time for comedy at the moment, however, for Carrie’s back in Homeland, with two further series already commissioned. She’s returned to New York where America is dealing with the fallout of a presidential election. ‘The whole series takes place just after the new president has been elected in November, but before the inauguration in January,’ says Claire. ‘That’s always quite an anxious time in America, especially this year when the election has been so bonkers. In our story the new president-elect, Elizabeth Keane [played by Elizabeth Marvel], is a sort of a composite of various people who were in the running, with definitely a bit of Bernie Sanders in that she’s very anti-establishment. Dar Adal and Saul [played by F Murray Abraham and Mandy Patinkin], the figureheads of the CIA, are anxious about her attitudes towards them. They’ve been briefing her and the implications are pretty serious because who knows who she’s going to usher into the new administration?’
A complicating factor is that Keane happens to know Otto During (Sebastian Koch), Carrie’s boss in Berlin and once a possible love interest. ‘Carrie also met Keane once at a function with Otto. We became friends and I’m secretly advising her too. Plus I’ve used Otto’s funding to set up a non-profit association with a lawyer who works for Muslim-Americans who’ve been wrongly accused of terrorist activity.’ Meanwhile, she wouldn’t be Carrie if she weren’t dealing with personal trauma. Peter Quinn, the assassin who fell in love with Carrie, has survived a sarin gas attack, but is a shadow of the dashing figure he used to be and his behaviour is unpredictable.
Claire, the daughter of a New York sculptor mother and a photographer father who found fame in the acclaimed TV teen drama My So-Called Life, admits she was hesitant to take the role. ‘I felt intimidated and wasn’t at all sure I was going to do it,’ she says. ‘I went to lunch with some girlfriends and said: “I’ve just read the script and it’s really compelling, but there’s no way. I just can’t do that.” I was nervous about how troubled Carrie is, how scary the world she inhabits is. Then I met the writers and producers and I was reassured by how responsible they were... I fell in love with it.’
There are aspects of Carrie she cannot approve of – her parenting skills for one. Happily for Claire’s real-life son with actor husband Hugh Dancy, four-year-old Cyrus, Claire’s views on motherhood are so different. ‘The parallels between our [Carrie’s and Claire’s] attitudes are nonexistent!’ she says.
She and Hugh met on the set of the 2007 romance Evening. They wed in 2009, and seven years later she says they’re happier than ever. ‘Although we’re not as infatuated with each other as we were when we met, and thank God because that’s just exhausting!’
It’s clear that friendship means a lot to Claire. ‘I’m still surrounded by all my oldest friends who pre-date any of this showbusiness nonsense,’ she says. ‘I’m in a book club with friends I’ve had since I was ages nought to two, and ages six to nine. They’re not actresses, they do all sorts of different things’
She says that after facing Carrie’s demons during the day, coming home to the two men in her life is the perfect stress-buster. ‘It’s good to have Cyrus take me out of all that turmoil, whatever darkness I’ve had during the day.’
Last summer she got some rare time off. ‘The writers had been pleading for more time because usually they write as we film... it meant I had a summer holiday. We went to Upstate New York and I went running and swimming with my boys. It was terrific.’
It looks as if that comedy will have to wait though.
Homeland is on Tuesday, 9.30pm, RTÉ2.
‘I’m surrounded by all my oldest friends who pre-date any showbusiness nonsense’