Carrie Mathison: Difference between revisions

Caroline Anne Mathison
Homeland character
First appearance	"Pilot"
Created by	Alex Gansa Howard Gordon
Portrayed by	Claire Danes
In-universe information
Occupation	Former: CIA Case Officer
Relatives	Frank Mathison (father) Maggie Mathison (sister) Ruby Mathison (niece) Josie Mathison (niece)

Caroline Anne "Carrie" Mathison, played by actress Claire Danes, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American television drama/thriller series Homeland on Showtime, created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon. Carrie is a CIA officer who, while on assignment in Iraq, learned from a CIA asset that an American prisoner of war had been turned by al-Qaeda. After a U.S. Marine platoon sergeant named Nicholas Brody is rescued from captivity, Mathison believes that he is the POW described to her.^[1] Carrie's investigation of Brody is complicated by her bipolar disorder and results in an obsession with her suspect.

For her performance as Mathison, Claire Danes has received several major acting awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama,^[2] the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama.^[3]

Caroline Anne Mathison was an Arabic language student at Princeton University, where she was recruited into the CIA by veteran officer Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin). Carrie developed a close working relationship with Saul, and is implied to have had a sexual relationship with CTC Director David Estes (David Harewood), her future boss, which contributed to the breakup of his marriage. Carrie eventually developed with bipolar disorder, for which she secretly began taking clozapine supplied by her older sister, Maggie (Amy Hargreaves).

As a field operative in Iraq, Carrie infiltrated a prison to meet with an imprisoned CIA asset named Hasan Ibrahim, who claimed that he had information regarding an imminent terrorist attack in the United States. Moments before his execution, Hasan told Carrie that an American prisoner of war was turned by al-Qaeda figure Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban). Carrie's unauthorized dealings with Hasan led to an international incident, causing Estes to have her reassigned to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center in Langley, Virginia.

Ten months later, Carrie attends an emergency staff meeting and learns that Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a U.S. Marine platoon sergeant, has been rescued after eight years in terrorist captivity. Carrie tells Saul about Hasan's claims, and expresses concern that Brody is the POW he was describing. With the CIA having no cause to investigate Brody, Carrie conducts her own unauthorized surveillance using a one-month FISA warrant delivered by Saul. Initially, Carrie finds no evidence of Brody's involvement with terrorism.

When her FISA warrant expires, Carrie takes to making personal contact with Brody instead. She bumps into Brody at a veterans' support group, where they strike up a conversation and immediately bond over their mutual experiences in the Middle East. Brody asks Carrie to have a drink with him one night, culminating in a drunken sexual encounter in Carrie's car. The next day, he is brought in to Langley for a polygraph test over the apparent suicide of Afsal Hamid, a detained terrorist with whom Brody had a violent confrontation. Carrie, suspicious of Brody's replies, orders the interviewer to ask if he's ever been unfaithful to his wife. Brody says "no", successfully beating the polygraph.

Afterwards, Carrie and Brody drive to her family's secluded cabin. Both find that they are more at ease with each other than with anyone else. However, after Brody realizes Carrie has been spying on him, she forces him to admit to his conversion to Islam, his meeting with and personal affection for Nazir, and his murder of a fellow POW named Tom Walker under duress by the terrorists. As Brody leaves, Saul contacts Carrie and informs her that Walker (Chris Chalk) is alive and was the POW who was turned. Carrie tries to apologize to Brody, but he angrily rebuffs her.

The investigation into Walker leads Carrie and Saul to Mansour al-Zahrani (Ramsey Faragallah), a Saudi diplomat who acts as Nazir's intermediary. Carrie blackmails al-Zahrani into arranging a meeting with Walker at Farragut Square. However, the meet ends in disaster when Walker detonates a briefcase bomb carried by a double, killing al-Zahrani and three bystanders. The incident causes a severe manic episode that leads Carrie to be hospitalized. Upon learning of her affair with Brody, Estes — already under pressure by Vice President William Walden to find a scapegoat for the bombing — dismisses Carrie from the CIA.

Upon learning about Walden's upcoming policy summit at the State Department, Carrie realizes that it will be the target for Walker and Nazir's upcoming attack. When Walker stages a sniper attack on the dignitaries, Brody, Walden, and Estes are led to an underground bunker. Carrie realizes that the shooting is a diversion from the actual attack, in which Brody will bomb the bunker with a suicide vest and kill everyone inside. Carrie appears at Brody's house and pleads with his daughter, Dana (Morgan Saylor), to contact her father and stop him from carrying out the attack. An alarmed Dana calls 911, leading the police to arrest Carrie.

Brody relents from the attack at the last minute following a sudden phone call from Dana. The following day, as Carrie is being released into Maggie's custody, Brody confronts her and insists that he is not a terrorist. Carrie, now discredited and doubting her own sanity, asks to be taken to a hospital for electroconvulsive therapy. Saul tries to stop the procedure, but she is undeterred. When Saul mentions that Nazir's son, Issa, was killed in a drone strike, Carrie — remembering that Brody cried Issa's name during a nightmare — fleetingly ponders this connection before being given a seizure by the ECT treatment.

Six months later, Carrie is persuaded by Saul and Estes to fly to Lebanon to meet a former CIA asset named Fatima Ali (Clara Khoury). Fatima gives the time and location of a planned meeting between her husband and Nazir in exchange for her defection. Saul and Estes' lack of trust in Carrie's judgment causes her to briefly have another breakdown. Carrie, Saul, and Estes set up an operation to capture Nazir, but Brody — who has been elected to Congress and is observing the operation with Walden in a situation room — tips him off and allows him to escape.

Carrie, her obsession with the case renewed, ransacks Fatima's apartment and comes out with a satchel full of documents. After a pursuit by a Lebanese mob, Saul finds a hidden compartment in the satchel that it contains a memory card with Brody confessing to the aborted State Department bombing. She becomes reinvigorated when Saul shows her the video. The video convinces Estes to let Carrie watch Brody, and to assign a CIA analyst named Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) to run the operation. Quinn has Carrie purposefully meet with Brody as part of a sting operation. During the meeting, Carrie blows her cover and confronts Brody about his treason, Saul and Quinn have him arrested.

During her interrogation of Brody, Carrie catches him by surprise by admitting that she wanted him to leave his family and move in with her. After Carrie systematically breaks Brody down and correctly surmises that Dana's phone call prevented the State Department bombing, he tearfully admits to his collaboration with Nazir and other al-Qaeda associates, and reveals that Nazir is planning an attack. Carrie gives Brody an ultimatum: either be exposed and sent to prison, or help the CIA in exchange for immunity. Left with no other options, Brody agrees to help the CIA.

The pressures arising from both his family's needs and his espionage work lead Brody to break off contact with al-Qaeda. Carrie takes Brody to a hotel to convince him to go back to al-Qaeda; she has sex with him while Saul and Quinn uncomfortably listen in. Carrie is captured by Nazir, who threatens to kill her unless Brody aids him in assassinating Walden. Carrie is released and leads the search of the abandoned mill where she was held. Realizing that Nazir is still hiding in the building, she leads a SWAT team inside and witnesses his death. Estes offers to reinstate Carrie and promote her to Station Chief, but she declines in order to pursue a relationship with Brody.

During a memorial service for Walden at Langley, al-Qaeda operatives plant a bomb in Brody's car and detonate it, in an attack planned by Nazir in advance of his death. The blast kills Estes, Walden's family, and numerous senior government officials. Al-Qaeda also leaks Brody's confession video as a frame-up. Believing that Brody is innocent yet knowing that no one else will, Carrie convinces him to flee to Canada while she sets out to clear his name.

Fifty-eight days after the Langley bombing, Carrie is called to answer questioning by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. During her testimony, an unstable Carrie states that Brody was not behind the attack. Information is leaked to the committee and to the press about her previous immunity deal with Brody, as well as her sexual relationship with him. With the government likely to disestablish the CIA, Saul is forced to acknowledge Carrie's bipolar disorder when he appears before the committee.

Hurt and angry, Carrie retaliates by leaking classified information to a reporter, leading Saul to have her committed for 24 hours. Carrie, who has by now stopped taking her medication, refuses to cooperate with her doctors, and throws Quinn out of her room when he comes to visit, convinced that the CIA sent him. When Carrie's father and sister, on Saul's advice, tell her to begin taking her medication again, she flies into a rage during a psychiatric hearing and has to be forcibly medicated and restrained. Saul and Quinn visit Carrie in confinement, but she rejects them both.

In the psychiatric ward, Carrie begins taking her medication again. During her confinement, a lawyer comes to visit her and offers to help her retaliate against the CIA, which Carrie angrily refuses. The lawyer, a man named Bennett (Martin Donovan), approaches Carrie a second time and explains that he works for an Iranian bank which financed the Langley bombing. Bennett offers to protect Carrie from further reprisals in exchange for intelligence on the CIA's inner workings. Carrie seemingly agrees, but this is revealed to be part of a secret operation she is taking part in with Saul, who she has reconciled with.

Homeland co-creators Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa initially pitched the show to networks with the Carrie Mathison character being a rather straight-laced CIA officer.^[4] Once it wasn't picked up and they moved on to the cable channels, they were able to experiment with more complex and flawed main characters. Carrie was given bipolar disorder and made more of an unreliable narrator.^[4] Showtime eventually secured the rights to the show and embraced the more unstable version of the character.

From the initial conception of the character, Gordon and Gansa targeted Claire Danes to play the lead role of Carrie. The pair were very impressed with her acting prowess, especially in My So-Called Life and Temple Grandin, but were skeptical as to whether she would accept a television role.^[4] Indeed, Danes was not necessarily looking to return to television, but she found the script and the character to be very compelling.^[5] In addition, the opportunity to be a part of the "renaissance" of high-quality dramas on cable television appealed to her.^[5]

To prepare for the role, Danes had to learn much about the CIA, as well as the nuances of playing someone who has bipolar disorder. Danes' personal research into the CIA touched on such topics as its internal culture, agency politics, and the implications of being a female agent.^[6] She also was granted access to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and was able to personally consult with the female CIA officer whom the Carrie Mathison character was loosely based on.^[6]

Hank Stuever of The Washington Post in his 2011 Fall TV roundup said that Carrie Mathison was "easily this season's strongest female character".^[7] The A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff called Carrie "my favorite new character of this TV season", noting the way she attacks everything with reckless abandon.^[8]

In November 2011, The Atlantic named Carrie Mathison as one of the best characters on TV, calling her "the thinking man's Jack Bauer", and going on to say "We both root for Carrie's assuredness and are turned off by her brash, erratic, and occasionally reckless behavior".^[9]

In Digital Spy's list of the top 25 best TV characters of 2012, Carrie Mathison was ranked #2.^[10]

For her portrayal of Carrie Mathison in the premiere season of Homeland, Claire Danes received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama,^[2] TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama,^[3] Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Drama Actress,^[11] and Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.^[12]

For the second season of Homeland, Danes repeated her wins for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series,^[13] Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and the Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. Additionally, she won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series.

• Carrie Mathison at Showtime