NEW YORK, N.Y. — Less than two weeks after announcing that season four of the hit television drama Homeland would be premiering this fall, the show’s producers threw a glitzy party at its New York headquarters to celebrate the success of its “Bowe Bergdahl” guerilla marketing campaign, sources confirmed Tuesday.

Bergdahl, a Showtime-hired actor, “deserted” his Army unit in 2009 and was taken captive by “terrorists” in Afghanistan until his recent release in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees. The story of Bergdahl mirrors the show’s own plot, in which Marine prisoner of war Nicholas Brody returns home as a suspected jihadi.

Continuous coverage of Bergdahl in the news has caused interest in Homeland to skyrocket.

“It got really rough towards the end,” said a tan and slim Bowe Bergdahl, while making an appearance at the party to open up about his time in so-called captivity. “Our juicer broke down, so we had to make our organic smoothies by hand.”

“The A/C in my trailer even went out at one point. War is hell,” he added.

Bergdahl’s father, Bob, who appeared without his now-trademark beard, told guests the ad campaign really took some sacrifices.

“I had to grow that nasty, stringy beard, and learn how to use the Twitter. In the end, the friends that I made and the money were worth it.”

Don Buckley, who masterminded the campaign, was surprised by the U.S. government’s willingness to support the guerilla marketing effort.

“I couldn’t believe the president and Susan Rice actually played along. But now that I think about it, we might not have actually told them that Bergdahl was an actor,” he told Duffel Blog.

Asked for his thoughts on trading Bergdahl for five known terrorists, Buckley asked, “We traded actual terrorists for him?”