(CNN) Alex Gansa and the rest of the writers on "Homeland" were in the middle of writing episode 5 of Season 6 when Donald Trump was elected president. It was a shock, to say the least.

"Obviously the election surprised everybody and we had to adjust in the story room," Gansa, the show's executive producer, told CNN Monday night at an Emmy campaign event. "We did a lot of work trying to figure in this idea that Donald Trump was now the president, and it became quickly apparent then that a lot of stuff that was happening in the real world was [more uncertain] than what we were dramatizing."

At that point, the team had already decided to set the season in the period between a presidential election and the inauguration. They had also made some choices.

For one, their on-screen president was a woman. But, they insisted, President-elect Elizbaeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) was not a Hillary Clinton clone.

"Homeland's" president, was a hybrid, "a collage," as Marvel put it to CNN. She was a bit like Shirley Chisholm, with a little George W. Bush, a little Franklin D. Roosevelt, and "a lot of Joe Biden" mixed together, she said.

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