Related: Complete Coverage of TCA Winter Press Tour
Pasadena, Calif. — Showtime Networks president David Nevins placed outrage from Pakistan’s government over Homeland’s most recent season in the context of recent attacks on media Monday during his TCA winter press tour executive session.
“It’s been a bad month for free speech around the world,” Nevins said. “Homeland, I thought the Pakistani embassy handled it the way that you’re supposed to handle it. They released a statement through the press representing their side. That’s how the game is supposed to be played.”
The past month has seen terror attacks in France that began with the killing of 12 people at the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, as well as continued fallout from the cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment by hackers believed to be linked to the dictatorship in North Korea.
In December, a spokesperson for the Pakistani embassy in the U.S. issued a statement to the New York Post criticizing Homeland for portraying Islamabad “as a grimy hellhole and war zone where shootouts and bombs go off with dead bodies scattered around.”
Nevins also addressed criticism that Homeland frequently got wrong portrayals of Urdu and Pashto accents, saying the show is “not going to shy away” from attempting to execute portrayals with a high degree of difficulty in the future. “I hope that nobody making shows for us, nobody bringing shows to us, shies away at all from the difficult stuff.”
