Homeland season six features US female President: Is she based on Hillary Clinton?

It appears as though American political thriller Homeland has taken inspiration from the US 2016 presidential election. The hit show, which stars Claire Danes as Central Intelligence Agency officer Carrie Mathison, will feature a female president of America in its sixth season.

Danes has been dropping hints about the forthcoming season of the spy drama, claiming that it will centre on a woman president-elect conducting the transition between Election Day and the inauguration, but she won't bear much resemblance to Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

The series, which was developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa and created by Gideon Raff, will not draw any similarities from the current presidential hopeful, according to 37-year-old Danes, who plays the bi-polar protagonist.

She insists that Homeland's new commander-in-chief will instead be "a composite of all the different candidates." If that means a fictional love child of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Gary Johnson and Clinton, then we're in for a rollercoaster of a sixth season.

Speaking in a Q&A with Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center, she said that the new political leader is "kind of – not rebellious necessarily – but she's challenging norms and is a little threatening for that reason," and that she "gets along with Carrie Mathison pretty well". This may give away a big clue that TV's favourite CIA officer has returned to work for the government.

Either way, we won't find out what the new president of the US is like – in Homeland's eyes – until early 2017.