Showtime’s popular political thriller Homeland will add a female president-elect in its sixth season, according to the show’s star Claire Danes.
During an in-depth Q&A moderated by Vanity Fair‘s James Wolcott, Danes and the show’s executive producer-director Lesli Linka Glatter revealed that Homeland’s new female Commander-in-Chief won’t be a reflection of Hillary Clinton, but rather “a composite of all the different candidates.
Danes, who’s starred in the award-winning show since it debuted in 2011, said Homeland‘s new woman president will “challenge the norms [and] is a little scary for that reason.”
Glatter and Danes’ announcement came, coincidentally, on the same day that Hillary Clinton crossed the delegate threshold to become the Democratic party’s 2016 presidential nominee.
With the addition of a female president, Homeland will join a growing list of popular television shows that feature a female sitting behind the Resolute desk.
HBO’s Veep sees Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing President Selina Meyer. In the past, shows like NBC’s State of Affairs, FOX’s 24 and Prison Break, and ABC’s short-lived Commander in Chief have all casted woman to take on the role of a female U.S. president.
Homeland has a tendency to tackle timely geopolitical issues in its storylines; Season 5 of the popular series was filmed in Berlin and centered on a looming threat from the terrorist group ISIS.
Nevertheless, showrunner Alex Gansa said in December that it is not the show’s intention to take a stand one way or another on political issues.
“Homeland tries not to do that,” Gansa told Entertainment Weekly. “We try to pose questions, not posit answers.”
Season 6 of Homeland premieres in January 2017.
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