‘Homeland’ season 6 premiere: Rupert Friend becomes immediate Emmy contender
You don’t act for the sake of Emmys, or any other awards show for that matter; you act to tell a story, and hope to bring those words and actions to justice to the best of your ability.
Nonetheless, we challenge you to find in 2017 so far — or much of 2016, for that matter — a performance that rivals that of Rupert Friend as Peter Quinn in the “Homeland” season 6 premiere on Showtime Sunday night. Maybe it’s started to become a tad blase to say that the drama is a great show — of course it is. This is one of the good shows that you take for granted. It’s been on the air for long enough now that viewing it is akin to tradition. Even if the show itself alters your mind, the act of doing so is not so altering an act.
Yet, in watching Friend’s performance in this episode, almost everything is altered. He destroys perceptions of who Peter Quinn is, how we are meant to view military hospitals, and how someone with such a vast amount of PTSD and the aftereffects of chemical warfare struggles to live within their own skin. This Quinn is a completely different character — he’s broken, he’s hopeless, and everything about him physically and mentally is different. Sometimes on other shows you see a character undergo this transition for an episode or two, only to then have them pop up and appear different a mere matter of minutes later. This is not such an overnight process for Quinn.
Even just in looking at the image above, you can see several different things about the man that are different. There’s an innocence and a helplessness in his eyes, a sign of a man not understanding the surrounding world other than that he doesn’t feel a part of it. His hair is shaggy and disheveled, and he’s running from something. Maybe he’s running out to forget himself for the next few hours, or maybe he’s just running to avoid having to stand still.
Friend’s scenes with Claire Danes were powerful, given that Quinn recognizes Carrie refuses to give up on him and his capacity to get better; that doesn’t mean that he agrees, but he shows more cognizance in these moments than others. He has the awareness of who he was as opposed to who he is; maybe you consider it regret or frustration, but there is an understanding that had he done things differently at the end of season 4 or maybe had not received his orders, he could have stayed with Carrie and would be on a different path. He deals with regret in ways that are different than others, and with that is difficult to read.
Yet, you cannot change the past. You can only build towards the future. For Quinn, much of this rebuilding process is going to begin with him deciding he wants to be a part of it. This is one of the most drastic transformations of a character we’ve ever seen, and it’s a reflection of both the issues facing veterans and anyone who has stared death so closely in the eyes. (Even Quinn’s eyes are different, by the way.)
Congratulations to Friend for opening our eyes and being so brave to take this material on. To think, there are still so many stories left to tell this season.
What did you think of Friend’s performance in the premiere? Let us know in the comments, and click here to secure some additional news related to “Homeland” right now. (Photo: Showtime.)