Morena Baccarin Received Hate Tweets After Controversial 'Homeland' Scene

Showtime's Homeland is no stranger to making negative headlines in the news and generating backlash for their show's content. In a recent interview with HuffPost Live, actress Morena Baccarin opened up about a particular scene in the drama series involving the Quran that caused quite a commotion on social media and the hate tweets she received because of her participation in the episode.

For three seasons, Baccarin played Jessica Brody, wife of titular character Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a United States Marine Corps Sniper who was held captive by Al Qaeda as a prisoner of war. In the season two premiere of the political thriller series, Jessica and Nicholas get into a heated debate after he admits to her that he's adopted the Islam religion as his own.

Shocked that he kept such a huge secret from the family and frustrated that her husband would willingly embrace the religion of the men that tortured him, Jessica decides to throw his copy of the Quran on the floor. Having the Quran touch the floor is viewed as an insult and an act of desecration to the religion. This scene was the root of of many negative tweet reactions.

"There was some stuff that we did in the second season where I throw the Quran on the floor when I'm angry at [Nick] Brody, and I did get some hate tweets about that," Baccarin told HuffPost Live. "People forget that you're just expressing what's given to you to read on the script. Of course you take some responsibility for actually doing it, but it's a story."

The 36-year-old native of Brazil anticipated several episodes to cause mix reactions with viewers due to the sensitivity of the show's content, especially scenes that seemed to mirror similar real-life events. Despite the backlash she received for the scene, Baccarin revealed she's continuously praised the writers for addressing serious issues.

Baccarin, who currently stars on the Fox crime-drama series Gotham, admits the writers weren't afraid to start outside arguments or explore divisive topics. If they wanted to tell a certain story, then they were going to do it with or without universal approval, according to Baccarin.

"We're telling a story, and that is the beautiful thing about being on a show or a movie is you get to express something," she said. "But at times it was a little bit close to home, and you just kind of felt like, what's going to happen? Are people going to be upset about this? What can you do?"

Season six of Homeland is expected to make its TV debut sometime this year.