Everybody loves an underdog, something that helped “Homeland†when it was an upstart thriller on a premium cable channel that wasn’t HBO. But after the Showtime hit won the Emmy for best drama last year for its debut season, “there was a bit of a target on our backs,†said Alex Gansa, one of the co-creators.
The second season, which pushed the bounds of credulity for some viewers, may have had something to do with it. But that didn’t keep the show from being nominated again for television’s top drama. Mr. Gansa discussed the series, which returns for its third season in September, its Emmy nominations â€" which included acting nods for Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Mandy Patinkin, Morena Baccarin and Rupert Friend â€" and “New Girl†envy. These are excerpts from the conversation.
The second season of “Homeland†received much more criticism than the first. Does this nomination in any way redeem it?
We’re sort of the reigning top drama and it’s really nice to get the opportunity to defend our title this year â€" that’s really the way I feel about it. When you start defending episodes and things, you just can’t help but sound like a whiner. We let the episodes and the season stand on their own. If I’m anxious about anything, its about the third season, not the second season.
What can you tell me about the next season?
Not much. The Carrie-Brody story continues for another year, and is all in the aftermath of what happened at the end of the second season. The fallout from the next 9/11.
How ripped-from-the-headlines do you aim to be? Is that a priority?
We try not to be behind the news. We try to get out in front of it. Sometimes it’s nuts. One of the first images of the second season was a demonstration outside an American embassy in Beirut. Two weeks before the show aired â€" obviously this had been written months and months before â€" the whole Benghazi thing happened. We do have to be very sensitive and try to portray any of these events in a conscientious way and not try to be exploitative.
Were you surprised by the more critical response you got for the second season?
I think we were kind of expecting it. You can’t continue these runs forever. But I don’t think we were fearful as a result. We just tried to tell the most engaging, compelling story that we could and let critics and audiences do what they do.
It’s a TV show so obviously there’s creative license. But how closely do you pay attention to getting the details right?
We have a lot of consultants on all fronts. Psychiatric consultants on the side of Carrie’s bipolar condition. We have a lot of military advisers and a lot of intelligence officers who are advisers, and we’re constantly querying them. We try to be as verisimilar as we can. But in the end drama and invention will win out if it’s going to get us a better story.
You’re talking about multiple sensitive topics â€" faith, Islam, P.T.S.D., terrorism.
Howard [Gordon, one of "Homeland's" executive producers"] worked on “24″ all those years and I came on and worked on it the last couple. I think we got a real education in how to deal with those things. “24″ became a lightning rod for the conversation around enhanced interrogation techniques. So we understand what it means to wade into these issues. Our solution was not to be polemic or didactic on any one of these things. To ask the questions and let the audience make up its mind. Is it worth being a little more safe and sacrifice a little more civil liberty? Is it worth degrading Al Qaeda overseas with drone strikes at the risk of creating more terrorists? These are all interesting questions.
Do you ever wish you were just dealing with a sitcom with a laugh track and dad-is-dumb jokes?
We share the floor with “New Girl,†and if you listen to the story room at “New Girl,â€Â everyone is exploding into laughter every five minutes, and we’re all sitting around glumly talking about suicide vests. Sometimes you do wish you could migrate next door.
