Hit Showtime TV series “Homeland” filmed a scene for its sixth season in Bushwick on Wednesday night, at Garden Playground on Beaver Street at Ellery Street.
The film crew arrived before sunset, and the single local shoot was scheduled to wrap at 2:00 a.m. A source with knowledge about the production tells Bushwick Daily that the shoot would account for five pages worth of material within the episode’s script, and another source told Bushwick Daily that the production had secured access to the entire block for the night.
Claire Danes, the actress who plays protagonist Carrie Mathison, a bipolar CIA agent, was on set; a production source told Bushwick Daily that the high profile performer waited to shoot inside P.S. 120 Carlos Tapia, the elementary school abutting Garden Playground.
The show has accumulated a slew of awards since its premiere in 2011, including the 2012 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and the 2011 and 2012 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series. Danes received the Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and was nominated for the 2015 Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series.
SPOILER ALERT for fans of the show: production sources describe the scene they were filming as a confrontation between Carrie and another character.
The sixth season of “Homeland” takes place in New York and premieres on Sunday, January 15th— so keep an eye out for this scene from the neighborhood as you find out what fresh hell the writers have in store for Carrie and her associates this time around.
The show was also recently renewed for another two seasons; perhaps there will be additional Bushwick shoots in the future!
This is also Garden Playground’s second star turn this summer: the playground is the site of a public art initiative undertaken by the organization CityArts, which has brought community-driven murals to the playground’s walls.
Garden Playground is around the corner from the office building of Bushwick’s historic Ulmer Brewery, a location that is often used for film and television shoots by HBO’s “Girls,” CBS’s “Elementary,” and most reecently, the Robert De Niro film “The Comedian.”
Other shows that have filmed elsewhere in the neighborhood this summer include HBO’s “The Deuce,” (at Tina’s Diner and on Central Avenue), FOX’s “Gotham,” (on Broadway near the Kosciuszko Street stop on the J train) and, most recently, Amazon’s “Mozart in the Jungle” (at The Sweatshop on Meserole Street in East Williamsburg).
All photos by Cristin Noonan for Bushwick Daily