The end is in sight — and Sam Trammell is feeling the pressure. The actor, 51, joined Homeland as Vice President Benjamin Hayes for the final season — and feels extremely lucky for the huge opportunity.
“There is a lot of pressure. This is, like, the highest quality of highest-quality shows,” the This Is Us alum told Us Weekly exclusively at the New York City premiere on Tuesday, February 4. “I wish I could tell you a lot more about my character. He’s brought in by the president to sort of heal the partisan divide. But so much happens. It’s so surprising.”
Benjamin Hayes is “ambitious, young and a little inexperienced,” the actor added. “He’s finding his way and he’s a very confident person. He’s definitely a right of center kind of person.”
Trammell also noted that while filming, he was constantly impressed with everyone involved in the show.
“The show’s work is so tight and the writing is so good. They’ve been doing it for seven years, and you walk on and everything is going full tilt and on, so you can just focus on the acting and the scenes,” the former True Blood star said. “So it was, for an actor, such a delight. Getting to work with Mandy [Patinkin] is unbelievable. Hugh Dancy, Linus [Roache] are just so great. It’s just, like, A-team TV.”
Patinkin, who has played former CIA agent Saul Berenson since the series’ 2011 debut, later revealed to Us that the show has impacted him in so many ways.
“There are aspects of Homeland that — people I’ve met and work with, the aspects of the character that the writers blessed me with — who taught me how to be literally a better human being, how to listen better, be kinder, more even-keeled, how to work harder for humanity and changed my life,” the Dick Tracy star, 67, told Us. “Saul Berenson changed my life.”
He continued about his character: “When you get to live with someone that closely — and I got to be as close as anybody could be to Saul Berenson — it’s the kind of human being that you want to have inhabit you, and you are unbelievably grateful for,” Patinkin said. “I’m not about to leave that fellow behind. He will come see me often. And he is a conglomeration of all the most extraordinary people I’ve met in my life.”
The final season of Homeland premieres on Showtime Sunday, February 9, at 9 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Lexi Ciccone
