HOMELAND's Alex Gansa Reveals Season 4 Secrets

Showtime's Homeland is gearing up for a major creative overhaul for its fourth season. Following the departure of Damian Lewis, the leading man, at the end of season 3, the show plans to make major changes to the cast list and setting. Showrunner Alex Gansa revealed some secrets about the upcoming season in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Gansa commented, "There's so many new roles to be cast, it's like doing another pilot-which is exciting and terrifying at same time."

Click here for the full interview.

When asked what season 4 is all about, Gansa replied, "It's about seeing Carrie Mathison for the first time doing the job she was trained to do - being a case officer in a foreign capital. We're going to see what an intelligence officer does on the ground. How she recruits assets, how she deals with the foreign government and her country team - the people she works with in the embassy - and the host country's intelligence services. That is a complicated and murky world, one that we hope is filled with intrigue and drama and adventure."

Season 4 will take place six months after the end of season 3 and Carrie has given birth to her child. Gansa commented, "I'd rather not give away where the kid is, but I will say probably one of the reasons she's found herself in Afghanistan and Pakistan is it's a place where you're disallowed from bringing a dependent."

And when asked whether or not Brody will appear in flashbacks, Gansa hinted, "I would always hold out the possibility that something like that could happen. He was such as significant part of Carrie's life that just to drop him completely would feel wrong, because Carrie is grieving for his loss."

Homeland tells the story of Carrie Mathison (Danes), a bi-polar CIA officer who plays by her own rules. At the end of last season Carrie, pregnant with the late Brody's (Damian Lewis) baby, along with her mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), brought a significant and much-needed win for the agency and country at large. Along with Danes and Patinkin, Emmy nominee Rupert Friend will return for season four, along with Nazanin Boniadi, who was recently promoted to a series regular.

HOMELAND tied for the most wins of any program at the 2012 Emmy Awards, honored with six wins including Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, and Outstanding Lead Actress and Actor in a Drama Series; and garnered 11 Emmy nominations in 2013. Additionally, Homeland has been awarded Golden Globe Awards, SAG, Peabody, Television Critics Association, AFI and Critics' Choice Awards. The series was developed for American television by Alex Gansa &Howard Gordon, and based on the original Israeli series "Prisoners of War" by Gideon Raff. Along with Gansa, Gordon and Raff, the executive producers for season four are Alexander Cary, Chip Johannessen, Meredith Stiehm, Avi Nir and Ran Telem.