NEW YORK, Oct 18 — If there are water-cooler moments at the White House, odds are good that the actress Claire Danes figures into them. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have declared themselves fans of her geopolitical TV thriller, “Homeland,” which recently began its fifth season on Showtime.
Now add Jeh Johnson to the list; the secretary of Homeland Security admitted to binge-watching every season.
Danes, 36, looked surprised at that disclosure, but cult classics have long been her strong suit. Her first starring role, which was broadcast when she was 15, was on the short-lived but much-discussed series “My So-Called Life,” about the delicate contours of adolescence.
After a number of big-screen films, notably Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo & Juliet,” opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Danes returned to TV in the award-winning title role of “Temple Grandin,” a movie about the autistic animal behaviorist.
From there, it was a short skip to Carrie Mathison, the brilliant and bipolar CIA agent of “Homeland,” for which she has won two Emmys, two Golden Globes and the apparent admiration of the Obama administration.
Johnson, 58 (whose first name is pronounced “Jay”), is well equipped to review the show. A litigator at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and its first black partner, he was chosen by the Clinton administration to be general counsel of the Air Force.
He later served as general counsel of the Defence Department from 2009 to 2012, where he played a role in authorising drone strikes, responding to WikiLeaks’ release of Pentagon materials and dismantling “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the former policy on gays in the military.
He has been secretary of Homeland Security since December 2013, leading an agency of 225,000 employees that is charged with protecting the country from terrorism and natural disasters, as well as overseeing cybersecurity and the nation’s borders.
Over dinner in the private room at the Dutch restaurant in SoHo (a fall salad and roast chicken for Danes; burrata and hanger steak for Johnson), the unlikely pair discussed the challenges of youth, the complexity of intelligence in our modern world and why spies and actors tend to marry their own.
Philip Galanes: In honour of Claire’s breakout role in “My So-Called Life,” and because everyone’s adolescence is pretty hideous, let’s start with middle school.
Claire Danes: It was horrible. You know, I went to middle school with Morena Baccarin, who plays Brody’s wife on “Homeland,” and we were both tortured by the same bully.
PG: Why would anyone torture you?
CD: There’s this point in school when girls are supposed to shut up. And I didn’t get that memo. I really liked school. I was the “ooh-ooh, call on me” girl. And I was bullied for ignoring those stupid social politics.
PG: I’m surprised you didn’t find a way around that. Your work is so psychologically acute.
CD: I was perceptive, but so frustrated. Then I became this vigilante, the defender of the kid getting picked on. That caused problems, too.
Jeh Johnson: This is in New York City?
CD: Yes. My mom’s solution was for me to switch schools. She was trying to help, but inevitably, the “new girl” is conspicuous and vulnerable all over again.
JJ: I was born here, too. When I was 6, we moved to Wappingers Falls, New York, about 70 miles north of here. My dad was an architect, and he ended up teaching at Vassar for 37 years. But I was a big underachiever in school.
PG: Was that rebellion?
JJ: It was a predominantly white, mostly blue-collar town, and I didn’t have a lot of African-American role models. I became a C/D student.
PG: D’s? But you’re a superlawyer.
JJ: Oh, a C was a gift in my house. My mother was beside herself. She would lecture and yell when I wouldn’t do my homework. But my dad was cool about it: “The boy will get it together.”
PG: What flipped the switch?
CD: I wasn’t a complete misanthrope. I had a great time in elementary school in this gifted program, surrounded by wonderful nerds and weirdos. And I loved Yale for as long as I was there. I learned to hang out with kids my own age, and that “mean girl” is just a phase.
JJ: What got me motivated was my dad’s idea that I go to Morehouse College in Atlanta. It’s an all-black, all-male school. Martin Luther King went there. The most famous person in my class was Spike Lee. And I really caught fire. I was so inspired by the people around me that I went from C’s and D’s to straight A’s by the time I left.
PG: Did race fit into that?
JJ: When I got to Morehouse, I was no longer in the minority. Race was irrelevant, and I found in myself someone I didn’t know: a person interested in politics and national service. Then I came full circle. I went to Columbia Law School and ended up marrying the girl next door from Wappingers Falls.
CD: No! Really?
JJ: I met her when I was 7. She saw me through all my underachieving. I asked her out for two years until she finally said yes, then we were engaged nine months later.
PG: Let’s turn to your work. When you’re acting, Claire, your face is like this finely gauged barometer for emotion.
CD: Oh, my Silly Putty face.
PG: Is that empathy with the characters you play or tons of research?
CD: It just so happens that feeling registers strongly and clearly on my face. It’s not anything I’ve honed. Though I have thought a lot about performing. I always wanted to, for reasons I still can’t explain. And I was lucky to grow up in New York, where I got training. But I learned on the job. I’m a professional empath.
PG: Still, it must have been hard to find Carrie Mathison?
CD: I read everything I could about the CIA and the bipolar condition, which was a strange syllabus. And I have a lot of therapist friends. But the greatest resource was YouTube: watching videos created by people who are bipolar, when they’re up at 4 in the morning in that euphoric manic state, really needing to talk.
PG: I love the expression “professional empath.” It makes me think of a speech you gave recently at Westminster College, Secretary, where you called on political candidates to tone down the hatred in this mean political season. That would be a feat of empathy, too.
JJ: Sure. But it’s also a desire to encourage those in public office, or seeking it, to be responsible. There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn’t a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.
PG: I get the danger of fear mongering. But if a candidate looks at illegal immigrants and truly sees rapists and criminals, isn’t it better for voters to know that?
JJ: It’s better for candidates to suggest ideas that are responsible, not ones that are incapable of being executed. People are influenced by what their leaders tell them. And bringing the level of rhetoric down brings the temperature down.
CD: Even if Trump isn’t elected, he has a big megaphone now. And the way he’s communicating is having an impact.
JJ: He’s pushing the whole debate to the right, to the point where other candidates are saying things you’d never imagine them saying six months ago.
CD: He’s changing the language.
JJ: Immigration is the most difficult issue I’ve ever dealt with, and I’ve dealt with some tough issues: drones, gays in the military, WikiLeaks, Guantánamo. But immigration is hardest because there are so few people willing to talk and build consensus. Everybody’s firmly made up their mind. It’s a polarised issue.
PG: You both give politicians a lot of credit. Isn’t the best way to deal with immigration to make a powerful movie or TV show about immigrants? The reason we have gay marriage now is because of ...
CD: “Will & Grace.”
JJ: Have you ever seen the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”?
CD: It’s criminal, but I haven’t. Or “Star Wars” or “The Bicycle Thief.”
JJ: Well, Sidney Poitier goes to this white family in San Francisco, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. He wants to marry their daughter, whom he met in Hawaii. This is 1967, when interracial marriage is still illegal in many states. The daughter wants their blessing right away. And Spencer Tracy says: “Have you thought about the children? They’ll be mixed race. That will be hard for them.” And Sidney Poitier responds: “Your daughter thinks that one of them is going to grow up to be president of the United States, and he’s going to have a colorful Cabinet.” And that’s just what happened: At that moment, living then, was a biracial 6-year-old, born in Hawaii, who would grow up to be president.
CD: That’s beautiful.
JJ: And he has a colourful Cabinet. But you’re right: It’s through movies and TV that social issues become norms.
PG: And you’re right about political discourse. It’s a complex world.
JJ: But more people have learned about targeted lethal killing from Claire than me.
CD: TV is a special medium for actors because we’re in conversation with the writers. We’re discovering the thing together. It’s dynamic. But our big decisions are not like his decisions, obviously.
PG: Is that why spies end up marrying spies, and actors marry actors?
CD: It’s true. When I spent time at Langley, talking to these CIA spooks, and I say that with affection, they do marry each other. Actors, too. We’re itinerants, traveling all the time. We work long, erratic hours. It’s hard to communicate with people who don’t understand.
JJ: I love to read the wedding announcements in the Style section. So often, it’s a lawyer marrying a lawyer. I think it’s about who you meet.
CD: But I also think that intelligence case workers have a lot of information that they can’t share. So keeping it in-house, marrying another agent, is useful. That’s a fact.
JJ: I married a dentist. — The New York Times
