When Homeland returns to television this fall, fans of the Showtime political thriller will have to come to terms with a dramatically transformed show. Brody (Damian Lewis) is dead and gone, his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin) and children Dana (Morgan Saylor) and Chris (Jackson Pace) are no longer part of the show, and protagonist Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), heavily pregnant with Brody’s child, has become the CIA’s station chief in Istanbul. Even Saul (Mandy Patinkin) is facing changes, now that he’s been fired from the CIA.
Luckily, there will be a host of newcomers to help Homeland get its momentum going again. Following the additions of Laila Robins (as a series regular), Corey Stoll (as a recurring guest star) and Suraj Sharma (in a heavily recurring role), Homeland has landed Raza Jaffrey and Michael O’Keefe for its fourth season.
Jaffrey, known for his roles in Eastern Promises, and on NBC musical drama Smash and ABC fantasy series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, has booked a heavily recurring role on Homeland. He’ll play “Aasar Khan, a decorated lieutenant-colonel in the Pakistan intelligence service” (a large part of the fourth season is set in Abbottabad, Pakistan).
As for O’Keefe, who previously had a role on the short-lived TNT crime drama King & Maxwell and appeared in films like Michael Clayton and Frozen River, he’ll play “deputy station chief John Redmond, stationed in the CIA’s Pakistan outpost and serving as No. 2 to Stoll’s character. He’ll butt heads with Carrie.”
Production on season four of Homeland will kick off later this month in Cape Town, South Africa. The season is set to take place in Istanbul, Kabul and Abottabad. It will find Carrie dealing with a new terrorist threat, her ever-present bipolar disorder and the tribulations of motherhood.
Currently, we don’t know how Homeland plans to deal with the death of actor James Rebhorn, who played Carrie’s father Frank. At the end of season 3, it was agreed that Frank would take care of Carrie’s child while she was serving as Station Chief in the Middle East, but obviously Rebhorn’s passing will require the writing staff to adjust those plans.
We’ll find out what the writers have in mind when Homeland returns to Showtime this fall.