Saylor (r) at the Emmys with her TV mom Morena Baccarin.
“HOME” GIRL: Morgan Saylor, 17, says she’s temperamentally suited to play the exasperated daughter. (
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Exciting plot twists have kept “Homeland” crackling this season — but mostly around suspected terrorist Sgt. Nicholas Brody.
But this week, Brody’s sullen teenage daughter, Dana, who attends school with Finn Walden, son of the vice president, moves to center stage when they go on their first, unforgettable date.
It’s a doozy of an episode that involves a late-night car chase from the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Walden (Timothee Chalamet).
The fallout, says the teenage actress who plays Dana, Morgan Saylor, “changes Dana’s life completely. She’s way more freaked out and not able to function in everyday life. There are some breakdowns. Big conversations.”
As if discovering that her dad, played by Damian Lewis, was a practicing Muslim wasn’t enough.
Saylor is that television rarity — a bold, new talent who seemingly comes out of nowhere.
Although she can do the recalcitrant teenage girl thing — “I would not openly categorize myself as a sullen teenager but that kind of role comes more easier to me than a bright, perky thing,” she says — the part requires Saylor to do much more than mope.
Director Michael Cuesta is so impressed with his young star that he keeps giving her dramatic showdowns with all the adults on the show.
Dana gives her mother (Morena Baccarin) the kind of obnoxious back talk that, years ago, would have earned her a good slap across the face.
She also threw CIA agent Mathison (Claire Danes) out of her parents’ house when Mathison barged in, off her meds and raving like a lunatic.
“You write her a line, and she makes it her own,” Cuesta says. “She made the writers want to get deeper into her character. It’s like, ‘Wow, we have such a good actress. Let’s keep with writing for her.’ ”
Saylor, who turns 18 on Friday, was born in Chicago and grew up in rural Georgia. She moved to Decatur when she was 10 years old.
After going to acting camp, she started doing community theater, a couple of commercials and small roles in small movies, but nothing as juicy as the role of Dana Brody.
“When I read the pilot, I thought it was fantastic. I wish I could say I predicted the show would be so huge,” Saylor says. “We had no idea.”
Saylor accompanied the cast to the Emmy bash in September, where she worked on her schmoozing skills — she congratulated Best Supporting Actor in a Drama winner, Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad” — and marveled that “your living room TV is sitting in that audience.”
Saylor’s parents are divorced. Her dad renovates Starbucks locations and her brother “works at a well-known pub” in Atlanta.
She plans to apply to colleges, but she thinks she’ll have to defer enrollment as she goes back to work on the series in June. She does think, though, that she’ll be able to graduate with her high school class in May.
She hangs out on the set with Baccarin and has had some confidential conversations with Danes, who became a star at age 15 on the series “My So-Called Life.”
“One of the very first times I met her, she came up and said, ‘I was on a show when I was your age, and it’s strange to be living so close to your mom.”
“Homeland” is in the midst of filming its season finale, set to air in December.