There’s a great article about the history of Homeland in The Hollywood Reporter; link and an excerpt below. It appears that Claire Danes’s agent (who also repped the Israeli studio that did the original series Homeland is based on) helped bring everything together.
'Homeland' Declassified: Battles, Backlash, CIA Meetings and a Secret Call With Edward Snowden
PART I: Former writing partners Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, reunited on the last seasons of Fox's 24**, option an Israeli format about two freed prisoners of war and recast it as an exploration of America's place in the world a decade after 9/11.**
ALEX GANSA (CO-CREATOR, SHOWRUNNER) This was unfinished business. Howard and I had always wanted to do our own show.
HOWARD GORDON (CO-CREATOR) We split up as writing partners in our 20s, during the first season of The X-Files. We stayed friends, but we just weren't seeing a lot of each other.
GANSA And 15 years later, I was on a train on my way out of the business. Howard rescued me from literal poverty and let me come on 24 for the last two years.
GORDON In the middle of the last season, [agent] Rick Rosen, who represents [Israeli studio] Keshet, came back from a trip to Israel, calls me and says, "I have your next show."
RICK ROSEN (AGENT) I'd gone to lunch with Avi Nir, the chairman of Keshet, and he says to me, "This writer, Gideon Raff, pitched me this show called Hatufim" — which translates to Prisoners of War. He asked, "Do you think that type of show would work in the States?" I said, "Absolutely, and I have the writer."
ROSEN I’d been looking for a project for Claire Danes in television for a while.
CLAIRE DANES (CARRIE MATHISON) I had just done [HBO's Emmy-winning miniseries] Temple Grandin, and I felt charged up to do something similarly thrilling and scary. There just wasn't much available.
DAVID NEVINS (THEN-PRESIDENT OF ENTERTAINMENT AT SHOWTIME) You didn't want to stop and think too much about the math of how old she was on 9/11 [22], but you also don't question the range of Claire Danes, so that was not a hard call.
GORDON And we had called the character Claire in the first 16 drafts.
DANES I still don't quite know how to take that.
Question: Has any actor cried more than Claire Danes in the series “Homeland”?
https://preview.redd.it/2mz2wqkljpw71.jpg?width=1511&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=65d5f555b4bf3a94e71f146676c2eed3902c8de9
She had some big teen films during the run of the series so I'm surprised that she wasn't able to transition over to film star at least after the show ended.
I remember she did a sequel to Scooby Doo which bombed. She did both Grudge films (the first was a hit) then she did a film with the director of Donnie Darko. Did her film choices doom her? Were audiences just so used to seeing her as Buffy and didn't care to see her in anything else?
