Brody Countdown 10

Homeland. The show that inspired Damianista to create this website approaches it’s eighth and final season. Nicholas Brody, the full dimensional character brought to life by Damian Lewis became the object of passion for her and a couple of cohorts, JaniaJania and me, NotLinda. We’ve all three contributed many pages of text on this website analyzing, describing, and creating scenarios for this beloved man. As a tribute to this decisive moment in our lives I’m putting together, from the library of our posts, a Brody countdown to the final season’s premiere on February 9th, 2020. I think I speak for all of us when I say without Damian Lewis there may have been no Homeland.

It’s all about Brody: Damianista’s Fan Story

My infatuation with Brody was not instant. He grew on me. I was intrigued by Brody and Carrie in the rain but then I was scandalized by the car sex before the polygraph test. They ultimately stole my heart with The Weekend.

“I just want to live here for a second.”

I melted.

If it was The Weekend that sealed the deal for me about Brody, it was Q&A that sealed the deal about Damian Lewis. The interrogation scene. I had never seen an actor being able to say all there is to say in silence. My jaw dropped. WOW. Let me put it in Carrie’s words:

“That’s the Brody I fell in love with.”

Why Damian Lewis? JaniaJania’s Fan Story

As Yanks, most of our first experience of Damian Lewis was Homeland. We saw him and noted how he held eyes on him whenever he was in a shot. The kind of performance the most hardened TV viewer cannot look away from. Like gravity or magnet, from Brody’s first appearance getting cleaned up at Ramstein (the damage in his eyes, the coldness) then on the plane back home to D.C. The way Brody couldn’t look Jessica in the eye at first, embodying in one non-glance the latent shame of being held captive, of being absent from his family, afraid that she wasn’t who she was when he left, knowing he sure as hell wasn’t the same man she said goodbye to the day he left for war. Damian Lewis communicated all of that in a microsecond.

From that first scene of the way Damian had decided to play Brody, my eyes were glued!

He held our rapt attention and, as the series, ostensibly a spy thriller, took a shocking momentous turn (in a parking lot!) into a riveting romance, the “perfectly impossible love” (as Claire Danes put it), any chance of looking away was long gone. I was hooked on the romance that came out of nowhere, but more so on the way Damian played Brody’s deep damage, his treachery, and eventually, his vulnerability. Really, how can anyone not see and feel in excruciating detail the emotions of a soldier on the front lines when Brody sings the Marine Hymn through gritted teeth with a gun to his head?

Actors have said it’s taken one role to change the way the world perceives them, one role that pulls the switch from, say, a guy who’s always cast as the foil, the sidekick, or the nerd, to a guy who is all of a sudden received as a very believable romantic lead.

Maybe, if I hadn’t seen the way Carrie looked at Brody, I wouldn’t have given Damian a second look myself? Hard to tell at this point. I’m in now, and in deep.

So what is it about him? Maybe it’s the voice? Velvet with a hint of cabernet. Or the body of a footballer half his age?

Or maybe it’s the indelible confidence, the willingness to be goofy without a hint of self-consciousness, and the easy intimacy he projects?

Who knows, perhaps, it was the posh upbringing that fed into his confidence? Whatever its origins, that confidence, combined with the voice and the boot camp physique, is manifest in a hotness beyond reason.

So, yeah, I was “turned” to Damian Lewis. And, like they say, you can never go back.

NotLinda’s Fan Story

I read a review of Homeland  season six (and not a positive one) and thought I’d give season one another try. Yes I’d watched an episode in real time but I couldn’t tolerate how oddly Claire Danes behaved. I know, I know bi-polar! So I got it this time.

By The Weekend I was enthralled by Q&A I was in love! I watched a couple of episodes a day; I watched from my recliner in the day and watched on my iPad in bed, all the way to The Star. This was a serious actor in a serious role. Damian Lewis is a beautiful man.

The character he created was alive to me and I loved him.

There is a moment with Jessica where she says “Carrie knows everything” and Brody does almost a double take. Damian shows him about to lie AGAIN and choose not to. In one second. It’s masterful and moving. So for me, yeah, it’s about Brody.

Thank you, Damian Lewis!