Will ‘Homeland’ be returning?
Q: Is “Homeland” doing a seventh season now or in the future?
A: The Showtime drama starring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin aired its seventh season in 2018. The eighth season will arrive in June and will be the final season of the series. A top Showtime executive has called it “a richly written character study that is now ready for its natural conclusion.”
Q: I am a big fan of “I Dream of Jeannie.” I read in a book that Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched” and “Jeannie”'s Barbara Eden didn’t get along. But the book wasn’t very specific.
A: Eden once told an Australian newspaper that, with both shows being made by the same studio, she and Montgomery saw
each other every morning and chatted often. “If there was any perceived rivalry it was the producers’ invention,” Eden said. But Herbie J. Pilato’s biography of Montgomery, “Twitch Upon a Star,” says Montgomery was livid about “Jeannie,” which premiered a year after “Bewitched” and aimed to capture some of the earlier show’s ratings magic with similar concepts. “That doesn’t mean I was annoyed with Barbara Eden and (costar) Larry Hagman,” Montgomery said; she was irked at the ways “Jeannie” borrowed ideas from “Bewitched” — “to the point where ‘Bewitched’ writers
were told to stay away from ‘Jeannie,’ ” Pilato says.
Q: Christine Lahti was always a favorite of mine and I enjoyed seeing her in movies like “Open House” and “The Pilot’s Wife.” You could find her movies quite often in the TV listings but now I see nothing, not a single movie listed over the past few years. How come?
A: While she still appears occasionally in movies, Lahti — an Emmywinning actress and Oscarwinning short-film director — has in recent years spent more TV time as a guest star in series; those include “The Blacklist,” “Hawaii Five-0” and both
“The Good Wife” and its successor “The Good Fight.” She has also been working onstage, playing Gloria Steinem in an offBroadway production in 2018, and writing, with her book “True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness: A Feminist Coming of Age” published last year as well. You can follow her on Twitter @ChristineALahti.
Do you have a question or comment about entertainment past, present and future? Write to Rich Heldenfels, P.O. Box 417, Mogadore, OH 44260, or brenfels@gmail.com. Letters may be edited. Individual replies are not guaranteed.