L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Stralci e commenti sui telefilm dai giornali italiani e stranieri

Pubblichiamo la prima parte dell'intervista a Damian Lewis di "Homeland" realizzata da Kaye Schilling di "GQ" (Usa) - La seconda parte domani.

Damian Lewis shows up for our meeting at a downtown New York City hotel looking the very opposite of his conservative, buttoned-up character on Showtime's Homeland: U.S. Marine-turned-terrorist mole Nicholas Brody. The actor is Rat Pack-jaunty in a straw porkpie hat and vintage-y polo shirt in avocado green, and a lot more gregarious than the repressed guys he plays to perfection (see also the 2002 version of The Forsyte Saga and HBO's Band of Brothers). You may have heard that he just picked up an Emmy for his performance on Homeland, as did the show (which returns on Sunday at 10 p.m.), as did his co-star Claire Danes, who plays Carrie Mathison, Brody's CIA nemesis and one-time fuck buddy. The London-based father of two (with actress Helen McCrory—Narcissa Malfoy in a few of the Harry Potter movies), is temporarily living in North Carolina, where Homeland is shot, but he's here for a fashion shoot for GQ (look for the results in our November issue). He wants a beer, but we're sitting in an empty dining room. Eventually a staffer walks by and we order, but thirty minutes go by and no beer. Lewis decides he doesn't care, then reconsiders: "No," he says bounding out of the room in search of a waiter, "I do want a beer! I was just being British and polite." Apparently playing Americans is wearing off on him. (Note: If you haven't watched the first season of the show, there are spoilers ahead.) 

GQ: Now that I've met you, I can see you're a lot more like the looser, funnier Charlie Crews—your character on NBC's Life—than either of the intense dudes you play on Band of Brothers or Homeland. It's really a shame NBC cancelled that show after two seasons—it was very good.
Damian Lewis: It's surprising how many people stop me to say that very thing. But I guess this is the new life that TV and film has thanks to On Demand and Hulu and box sets. I was having this conversation with a friend about how there's rarely a correlation between how many people have seen a show versus the hype that's around it. Judging by the reaction to Homeland, you'd think everybody had seen it. But actually, only 3 or 4 million watch it each week, which is less than half the number of people who watched Life. But even with its AFI award, Life was deemed only a mid-ranking success because it was on a network rather than cable. So it's rewarding three years later when people are still coming out of the woodwork to talk about how much they liked Life. I'm not disappointed personally because I'd still be doing it and I wouldn't be doing Homeland. But I'm disappointed for Rand [Ravich], who created the show. He deserved more from it. I thought it was very cleverly written.

GQ: Not to mention Life introduced your now famous co-star, Christina Hendricks.
Damian Lewis: She was simultaneously doing the first season of Mad Men. But people hadn't seen her in that yet.

GQ: And now look at her!
Damian Lewis: It's funny how that happens on TV: The headliner breaks in season one, and then the networks start picking off other members of the cast: Who do we push forward now? John Slattery is a friend of mine. We lived next door to each other when I was shooting Life and he was doing Mad Men.

GQ: Did you surf with him?
Damian Lewis: No, because I'm a horrible surfer. But I used to play golf with him, and then I couldn't get him to play anymore because he became totally obsessed with surfing. I don't like getting up at 5 a.m. and jumping in the water. I'm a slow starter.

GQ: But you play soccer really well, right?
Damian Lewis: I love playing sport. I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me. I have a pool in the apartment complex in Charlotte [N.C.] where we shoot Homeland, and it always feels very James Bond to have orange juice and coffee by the pool. For the first season of the show, I'd get up in the morning, jump in the pool, and lie in the sun, eating my breakfast. Then, of course, I'd realize that I had to smother myself in cream because I'm so pale, and it became a real ordeal. The novelty is wearing off a bit.

GQ: Apparently Homeland is Obama's favorite show. And you were invited to the White House because of that?
Damian Lewis: The serendipity of it is extraordinary. It just happened to be a British state visit in the year of the Olympics and there was an emphasis on sport and culture and I happen to be a Brit playing an America in Obama's favorite TV show. And it was at the zenith of Homeland's publicity, and so I somehow wiggled my way onto an invite list. The timing was everything. But it was fascinating.

GQ: What was Obama like?
Damian Lewis: He was unbelievably gracious and fun and happy to share a joke. My wife and I stood in line and when he got to us on the receiving line, he shook my hand, and I looked him in the eye and said, "Please let us know if you have any plans to go into Iran because we'd like to be as current as possible in season two." Quick as a flash he said, "We'll be sure to let you know." And we walked into the dining area and thought, Well, that's it. We'll probably be sitting next to the toilets. And then we found our names at the head table. I had Warren Buffet on my left and the president on my right. I got involved in a long conversation with them about energy policy. And the president told a great anecdote about Warren showing up at the Oval Office in a tattered old tie. He said, "You know, Warren, when you show up to see the president of the United States, you should have a nice tie." And he went into his closet and gave Warren one of his own ties and said, "Put it on." So we had this joke about how Warren goes to the White House to get new ties.

GQ: You're about four episodes into shooting season two of Homeland. Brody is now a congressman who, as we saw in last season's finale, wants to influence U.S. policy from inside. It was tough to pin Brody down in the first season: He was turned by Al Qaeda operative Abu Nazir while he was a prisoner of war in Iraq. It is Nazir who asks him to kill Vice President Watson via suicide bomb. But Brody only agrees because he felt it was the patriotic thing to do, because Watson is complicit in the atrocities in Iraq. That's one complicated terrorist! Do you have a better sense of him this season?
Damian Lewis: No, I have a worse sense of him because, um, you know, things have shifted and there's a very different set of circumstances now that he's a congressman. Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa [the show's creators] are very bold with their storytelling, and keen on staying half a step ahead of the TV audience, who are exceedingly analytical now. They can get ahead of you quickly, so the writers are always trying to pull the rug out from underneath people's feet. And I think, in their efforts to do that, it can be quite surprising for the characters too. I'm keen that any incident that happens on the show should still be based in that very confused, complex psychological state that the first season lived in, which is what I think elevated it above just your normal thriller. It never became improbable, because it was based in the reality of damaged people.

GQ: And I think it's fair to say that everyone on this show is pretty seriously damaged.
Damian Lewis: Everybody is desperate and unattractive, mostly, but made sympathetic in some way by their passions and longing—their causes—whether they are personal or broader political causes. That's what makes them attractive. But we're certainly in a place now where—already you can see it in episode four—that everybody is stretched, everybody is becoming slightly unhinged in their attempts to achieve their goals. And if everyone is like that, it means you never have one character who is able to point out other people's craziness because they're so wrapped up in their own. It's really fun to play someone who behaves badly in extremis. I think that's part of what Breaking Bad does so well.
(To be continued)