The "Homeland" star calls his choice to join the CBS procedural his "biggest public mistake ... I never thought they were going to kill and rape these women every night."

Emmy nominee Mandy Patinkin is currently enjoying popular and critical success on Showtime's Homeland. But his last TV job, on CBS procedural Criminal Minds, was such a terrible experience it left him thinking he'd never work in the medium again.

"The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place," Patinkin tells New York magazine in a new interview.

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Explaining why he abruptly quit the series before its third season began, blindsiding its creator Jeff Davis, Patinkin says, "I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year."

"It was very destructive to my soul and my personality," Patinkin says. "After that, I didn't think I would get to work in television again."

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Patinkin says that while Homeland also contains graphic violence, its message is coming from a very different place.

"A show like Homeland is the antidote. It asks why there’s a need for violence in the first place," Patinkin says.

A call to Davis' reps for comment was not immediately answered.