‘Homeland’: Elizabeth Marvel Cast As President-Elect Keane

Elizabeth Marvel (House Of Cards) has been cast in the high profile role of President-Elect Elizabeth Keane on the upcoming sixth season of Showtime’s flagship drama series Homeland, which will debut in January 2017.

Mirroring reality — something Homeland has frequently done — Season 6 will chronicle the events following the U.S. presidential election, with the entire season taking place between election day and the inauguration.(Homeland is likely to debut just before the 2017 Presidential Inauguration). The show’s decision to go with a female President is drawing attention because of the possibility of that happening in real life, with Hillary Clinton as the first woman Presidential nominee from a major party. The parallels don’t end there. Like Clinton, formerly a New York Senator, Marvel’s Keane is a former junior Senator from New York. Bright, charming and lively, Keane can be blunt; a natural politician. (She should not be confused with Megan Boone’s character Elizabeth Keen on The Blacklist.)

After she thwarted a terrorist attack in Berlin, season six picks up several months later and finds Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) back on American soil, living in Brooklyn, NY. She has begun working at a foundation whose efforts are to provide aid to Muslims living in the United States. It’s a strange, transitional time in the halls of government following the Presidential election, filled with anxiety and different competing interests, where a very fragile and complex transfer of power takes place between the outgoing president and the incoming president-elect.

In Season 6, Homeland will return to the U.S. after spending the last two seasons shooting in South Africa and Berlin. Production will begin in New York in early August. Homeland received four Emmy nominations earlier this month — nods for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series (Danes) and Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series (Lesli Linka Glatter).

Marvel, repped by Innovative Artists, is known for her role as Heather Dunbar on House of Cards. Her other TV credits include Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Fargo. Her film work includes True Grit and Burn After Reading.