Emmy Awards 2012: Contender Interviews

Morena Baccarin was thrilled to go from from being Anna, an emotionless alien on "V," to a fearful army wife on Showtime's new hit series "Homeland." "Thank God I get to be human again," she says noting that, "with Anna, I had to play her very internalized, and I couldn't show any emotion, so when I saw the script for 'Homeland,' I was like YES!"

She plays Jessica Brody, the wife of recently rescued POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) who was held by Al Qaeda for eight years and possibly turned. Although she was given an idea of how the show's main story arcs would unfold, she admitted to eagerly anticipating each new script. "We were all so ecstatic to get every episode. I remember at the end, after we got [episode] 11, we were like, 'Oh no! There's not another script for months! What am I going to do? I want to know what happens!'"

She says Lewis, "is really, really a gift. I was new to the cast, and I had a lot of anxiety coming in to the first episode ... and was still figuring out this character as I had been cast literally the week before. He sat down with me so much to talk over things and was so patient." Talking to Gold Derby, Lewis praised Baccarin's "fierce commitment" before joking that "she's so beautiful, that I think they tried to make her less beautiful to start off with, so everyone could believe that she was married to me."

The show received rave reviews and has steadily increasing ratings. Mary McNamara (Los Angeles Times) called the series, "politically resonant, emotionally wrenching and plain old thrilling to watch." Matt Zoller Seitz (Salon) said, "Morena Baccarin’s work as Jessica is so life-size that it takes a moment to register that just a few months ago, she was playing [a] close-cropped, blank-faced extraterrestrial despot."

Baccarin, Lewis, Claire Danes, and Mandy Patinkin could find themselves nominees along with the show itself during the upcoming awards season when nominations are announced on Dec. 14 (SAG Awards) and Dec. 15 (Golden Globes).