Ronen Akerman/SHOWTIME
The Showtime thriller Homeland won best drama series at this year’s Emmy awardsâ€"but now the drama surrounding the show, which stars Claire Danes as a CIA officer, has moved off the screen. Due to a Beirut-centric story arc that features scenes of violence on Beirut’s central thoroughfare Hamra Street, the country of Lebanon is taking action against the show’s producers. Minister Fadi Abboud of Lebanon’s tourism agency recently told Executive Magazine, a Lebanese publication, that h 01; would demand an apology from the show’s creators over a depiction that is “not portraying reality†and may, he fears, damage tourism in a city that he calls “more secure than London or New York†but that has struggled to shed its association with civil violence; Abboud, who said he would do so privately if it turned out the government was not procedurally able, also vowed to start a lawsuit against Homeland‘s production team.
(MORE: TIME’s Homeland Recaps)
Speaking on the matter to the Associated Press, Abboud went on to specify that he sees an additional slight in the Homeland version of Beirut: that’s not actually Beirut audiences are seeing on their screens. The controversial scenes were shot in Tel Aviv, in the Jaffa neighborhood, which bears some physical resemblance to the Lebanese capital. Homelandâ€"which was created by Gideon Raff, the Israeli writer-director behind its Israeli precursor, Hatufim (“Prisoners of Warâ€), who is not actually allowed to go to Lebanon due to his nationalityâ€"doesn’t manage to scrub every trace of Israel from the final episode, which includes a peek of one of Tel Aviv’s most famous skyscrapers. The decision to turn to one of Lebanon’s traditional enemies in order to film a sequence that is seen to portray Lebanon in a negative light was called a “double insult†on Lebanon’s main television news network, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Israeli officials and citizens interviewed for the Associated Press story didn’t seem much happier about the swap-out, but tended to couch that displeasure in a backhanded complimentâ€"the idea that Beirut should be pleased that anyone thinks it could be compared to Tel Aviv. Neither Showtime nor Twentieth Century Fox, which produces Homeland, have responded to the matter.
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