Emmys 2015: Alex Gansa celebrates ‘Homeland’s return to drama race

It’s good to be back on top. Just ask Alex Gansa, who on Thursday was celebrating “Homeland’s” Emmy nomination for drama series -- a year after the Showtime spy thriller was shut out of the same category.

“Now I can be completely honest and tell you how devastating it was,” he said of last season’s snub. “It was really hard.”

In hindsight, though, the slight may have been a blessing in disguise. As Gansa explained, getting passed over for drama series just two years after “Homeland” had swept the Emmys ceremony for its freshman season was a major motivating factor going into Season 4.

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“We all huddled around and made a vow that we’d leave everything on the court and do everything we could to get back on that nomination list.”

Those efforts included relocating the series from North Carolina, which doubled as Washington D.C. in the show’s first two seasons, to South Africa, which stood in for Pakistan. The dramatic emphasis moved away from Carrie Mathison’s turbulent love life and back to spycraft, and bringing in a fresh new supporting cast including Mark Moses, Suraj Sharma, Michael O’Keefe and Raza Jaffrey.

Perhaps these changes resonated with Emmy voters -- or maybe it was just the oatmeal.

Gansa said his “OCD completely took over” Thursday morning as he braced himself for the announcement. “I’m touching things and making my oatmeal in a specific way and putting on my lucky shirt. It was a bit of an exercise in neurosis.”

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The writer was expecting a fourth straight nomination for lead Claire Danes “because Claire is Claire,” but he was bracing for more disappointment for the series overall. “It’s hard to get back in the race when you got shut out the year before.”

Returning to the drama series race was “incredibly gratifying,” but Gansa said he also feels acutely for the many worthy contenders that didn’t make the cut this year, even in a field expanded to seven nominees.

Two in particular stand out.

“My heart personally goes out to the cast and crew of ‘The Americans’ and ‘The Good Wife,’ two shows that I watch, both of which had incredible seasons,” he said. “ There is something arbitrary about it in the end.”

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