Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 was — for the most part — a normal day in Charlotte.
The Panthers lost to the Bears, 29-34, at Soldier Field with new head coach Ron Rivera and rookie quarterback Cam Newton (Luke Kuechly was still playing at Boston College). The 2011 NBA Lockout meant there were no preseason Charlotte Bobcats games, and it
The Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, still meeting at West Charlotte Recreation Center, announced their Tuesday guests would be from McCreesh Place, Charlotte's first permanent supportive housing complex, which still serves people on North Davidson Street.
Over the weekend, the New Yorker started hitting shelves and mailboxes with an article about conservative mega donor Art Pope funding the Republican takeover of the North Carolina General Assembly, which had happened less than a year before. On the other side of the aisle, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick arrived in Charlotte to tour what was then named Time Warner Cable Arena in advance of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
The biggest news for Charlotte that night, however, was the premiere of the prestige cable television show “Homeland” on Showtime at 10:00 PM Eastern.
The headliner was Claire Danes as the genius, bipolar CIA officer Carrie Matheson, but for the first couple of seasons the show’s setting — Washington, D.C. — was played by the up-and-coming city of Charlotte, N.C., with occasional cameos from Mooresville (as Gettysburg), Raleigh (also as the capital), and other nearby locations.
“Homeland” filmed in the Queen City before the Democratic National Convention, before the Keith Lamont Scott protests, and before COVID. It’s a different Charlotte, a rare visual record of a city known for demolishing its history.
The above photo from Ed’s Tavern is another reminder of the era. Olde Mecklenburg Brewery’s Copper was everywhere. Breweries like NoDa and Birdsong were founded that year, and not yet omnipresent in the Queen City.
Obviously, neither had a large presence in Washington, D.C. — but that’s beside the point.
“Homeland” was huge local news, with the show’s stars making occasional appearances in local media. Morgan Saylor, who plays Brody’s daughter Dana, was part of the cast throughout the Charlotte years, and gave the Charlotte Observer’s Théoden Janes an important insight into the lasting impact “Homeland” had here - one that will ground our series.
“A lot of the places we filmed had never been filmed,” said Saylor. [Charlotte is] a wonderful place to work and film.”
Learning About our Future from a Television Past
While our local road Matheson Ave. is under construction, our “Matheson Ave.” series will look at the places in Charlotte that have changed, stayed the same, or disappeared since Showtime’s cameras left Charlotte.
In future installments, we’ll look at some of the Charlotte places that became the settings for international spycraft and political intrigue. Who would have thought Uptown’s Marshall Park could be the site of a terror attack?
There’s more to the story than the built environment, of course - after “Homeland” left the Queen City, then-Governor Pat McCrory, also Charlotte’s longest-serving mayor, joined the General Assembly in allowing North Carolina’s film incentive program to expire in 2014. That meant that when the “Homeland” crew needed a stand-in for Washington, D.C. after spending time in South Africa, Berlin, and New York City, they chose Richmond, Virginia instead of Charlotte.
“Homeland” also made its own history with Charlotte as the backdrop. A young Timothée Chalamet starred in the second season, and attended a private school - played by Queens University in Myers Park - with Saylor.
That history intersects with Charlotte’s. Chalamet, as the Vice President’s son, commits a crime in a scene filmed on the block of E 4th St. between College and Tryon. It’s the same block where, almost a decade later, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department allegedly “kettled” peaceful protestors during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
All of this is going to be fair game as we try and use the Charlotte - and the United States - we see in “Homeland” to look forward.
We hope you’ll join us on “Matheson Ave.” — and if there’s anything you’d like to see, if you have questions, or if you have your own stories, we hope you’ll share them in the comments.