'Homeland' star is seriaas about slang

American actress Claire Danes visited a Gugulethu preschool this week, but it was nothing new to her.

The award-winning star of the hit TV series Homeland recalled her own mother once ran a similar school in New York.

Danes said that when she was a little girl, her family home in the Big Apple was turned into a daycare centre.

One of the major differences between the Danes's home and Martha Makhura's crèche in Gugulethu, outside Cape Town, was in the numbers.

The preschool that Danes visited cares for 116 children, a much larger attendance than her mother had to handle.

However, the two women would have been able to share the problem of persuading the children to take afternoon naps, the actress said.

Danes arrived in Cape Town two weeks ago for the filming of the next season of Homeland.

Some of the cast and crew of the political thriller, set mainly in the Middle East and the US, took a break on Friday to visit projects in Cape Town run by the NGO Ikamva Labantu.

Danes said she wanted to "have a clear sense of the city in its totality, not just the more privileged versions of it".

"I'd love to come back and learn more about it," she said.

Danes and the Homeland crew will be in Cape Town until the end of November.

She said a friend who had lived in Cape Town for two years had given her tips on the city, but she was glad to experience it for herself.

Danes also revealed she had picked up something of the vernacular, especially "seriaas".

"I like the colloquialisms a lot - just now, now-now, ja. It's entering my lexicon," she said.

Homeland producer Michael Klick said season four would unfold in Islamabad, but Cape Town was chosen for the filming of it.