Homeland season 6: Showrunners were worried Donald Trump win would make the show ‘irrelevant’

'My first reaction was, "Oh my god, we are now counterfactual"'

Homeland is often criticised for being so melodramatic as to not reflect reality, but on 8 November it was made to look like an unadventurous daytime drama.

It had already installed a female president into its plot, and this progressive step was at odds with the regressive one happening in real life.

“I think the election result was as much of a shock to us as it was the rest of the country,” showrunner and co-creator Alex Gansa told The Hollywood Reporter.

“To say that we took it calmly would be a complete lie. My first reaction was, "Oh my god, we are now counterfactual to the point of being irrelevant."

“It took a while to dig ourselves out of that feeling,” he explained. “We just came back to that fact that Homeland, after all, is a fiction. And in the past, it's been world events that have caught up with the show. So we just stuck to our guns. We didn't take a break — we couldn't afford to, for one thing — so we just looked at our story, which is strong.

“It's always been a parallel reality. But it comments, in an interesting way, on current events. And we have to trust that our audience is hip to that fact, because they have been for all of these years. Let's hope it continues.”

Homeland returned for the first episode of its sixth season last night, focusing on a presidential transition.

Donald Trump’s inauguration as president takes place on Friday 20 January, with whatever musicians he can muster performing.