(The following story contains spoilers for the fourth season of the Netflix series. The diplomat.)
When it came time to develop the plots of the fourth season of The diplomatshowrunner Debora Cahn realized she needed to take things in a different direction in order to accurately reflect what U.S. State Department employees and international diplomats face.
“I think we’re seeing authoritarian behavior from leaders in a number of Western democracies, and at some point we felt like we weren’t talking about the world that we exist in if we didn’t address some of these issues,” Cahn said. The Hollywood Reporter. “It felt like we were in a fantasy land, and not in a good way. I want to be in a fantasy land a little bit, but I also want these people to grapple with what this generation of diplomats are facing, and so whether the behavior that you’re seeing is authoritarian or proto-fascist, I think, is a question that many people working in many different governments ask themselves every day.”
In the Netflix series’ eight-episode finale, U.S. President Grace Penn (Allison Janney), recovering from an assassination attempt earlier in the season, takes an increasingly aggressive approach to foreign policy, eventually sending warships to keep Russian warships out of British waters and threatening to fire on any ships, Russian or British, that get in their way. band. At the same time, Grace rejects anyone who questions her judgment, muzzling Keri Russell’s U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom because she is unwilling to carry out the president’s orders and appointing Todd, now a special envoy to the United Kingdom, to deliver her message and, perhaps most frightening, recalling Deputy Chief of Mission Stuart (Ato Essandoh) after he expresses disagreement with Grace’s plans via cable on a State Department dissent channel.
The real-world analogues of Grace’s bold behavior are not lost on Janney as she mentions threatening to attack anyone who stands in the way of American foreign policy.
“It’s crazy to make decisions like that with your closest ally; I can’t imagine anyone doing that,” Janney says knowingly. THR. “It didn’t make headlines, but I’m sure Debora was influenced by what’s happening in our country right now and decisions made with long-time allies.”
Efforts to suppress dissent also ring true to him.
“It’s similar to what’s happening today too. I mean, anyone who disagrees with you, you’re out. I don’t like the way you cover my administration, you’re out,” Janney said just days after President Trump banned CNN, MSNOW and Policy from the White House. “It’s not a pretty picture of Grace. It shows – I don’t want to say desperation but – (that she) doesn’t ever want to be made vulnerable by anyone again. I think that all comes from the (attempted) assassination.”
Cahn admits that she had not initially envisioned the character of Grace as someone who would take such a harsh approach to foreign policy, but this change grew out of Janney’s work as an actress and “unfolded over time.”
“It wasn’t an idea I had in mind from the start,” Cahn says.
And Janney wonders aloud how the shooting and possibly sexist concerns about whether Grace is tough enough to return to work might influence her more aggressive foreign policy.
“She was always a woman who was very confident in her instincts and who liked having power, and now it’s new for her to be vulnerable. She doesn’t like it, and she doesn’t like the way people treat her,” she says. “So she doubles down on making decisions that people start to question. “What is she doing here? Is it because he was shot? Why is she doing this?” She makes such tough decisions that people around her start to question her, and that of course affects her relationship with Todd because he’s someone who has known Grace long before she was in politics. And he worries about her. And when she looks at him, she sees the worry in his face, and she doesn’t like how that makes him feel, so it really puts a strain on their relationship. She basically sends him across the ocean to not have to have him there because he makes her feel even more vulnerable or doubt herself. So that changes the whole trajectory of this season a lot.
In the final minutes of season four, after talk of bold U.S. strategy reverberates through the Italian venue hosting the G7, Penn makes his plans clear at the start of the international summit. Ultimately, Russell’s Kate and a number of other U.S. officials can’t take it anymore. One by one, Kate, Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) and Secretary of State Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval) turn in their badges, publicly resign and leave the conference. Eventually, viewers see Vice President Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), Kate’s husband, step out, taking a moral stand as he appears to give up his very powerful seat at the table. Although not explicitly made clear in the final minutes of season four, Sewell and Russell view his removal as a resignation.
“I don’t think you can go out and then go back in,” says Sewell. THRas he and Russell joke: “I’ve changed my mind. Actually, sorry, I just want to see how – are you?”
Both Russell and Janney are moved by the resignations, with Russell seeing it as the kind of tribute to foreign service officers that reminded her why she wanted to star on the show in the first place.
“I like the way it ends,” Russell says of the season four finale. “That’s why I signed on for the show. It’s about this world of people that I really respect and this army of people behind the scenes who work and run the Foreign Service, USAID, all that stuff. It was meant for them, and where it happens is what I love so much about this show.”
Janney adds, invoking the current American political climate: “On behalf of Debora, I think it’s probably wish fulfillment to say, ‘Yes, that’s what you do when you don’t agree with what someone in power is doing.’ You say, “No, I will not serve for this administration.” I mean, how great would it have been to see Republicans stand up to Trump and say, “No, I’m not going to serve.” It would have been so amazing to see, but it didn’t happen. So we show that this happens.
Cahn is more circumspect about whether such dramatic resignations are the right thing to do, but she wanted to explore the decision to take a stand (and whether that involves leaving or staying).
“A lot of people resigned, and at the State Department and across government, a lot of people resigned in protest and retired in protest, and obviously hundreds of thousands of people were forced out, fired,” Cahn says. “From a distance, it seems very easy to say, ‘Well, if I were here, I would put a stop to all of this.’ And that’s hard to do. And there are hundreds of thousands of really good people who work for our government who aren’t overthrowing it. So, in some way, in making the decision to take a stand and denounce something that a government leader is doing, I really wanted to understand how that feels from the inside.”
And in making the decision to leave, Kate and Hal both weigh the trade-off between access and ideals.
“It’s something we talk about all the time, especially for these two characters, about being so close to why you started this whole thing, so close to what you wanted,” Russell says. “They both wanted to be in this room, and they’ve never been closer to that. And yeah, there are compromises along the way, and you’re just like, ‘I know, but once I’m in this room, I’ll be able to do the right thing. I’ll be able to affect the change that I want to see,’ influence the right people.
For Hal, Sewell says, “It’s a similar story in terms of his belief that access trumps almost everything. You have your principles. You have the things you want to do, and sometimes you may have to reduce the visible aspects of those principles in order to get in the room and have access to them. And he went as far as he could. He has his reservations. He noticed the same things. But his belief is that being by his side with a remote chance of stopping his behavior is the best thing to do. best chance. But the problem is that he’s so used to living in this gray world, he doesn’t see where it’s getting distorted, and he’s too compromised, he’s losing his bearings a little, and it takes (Kate) to give him that extra push.
Of Grace’s approach to foreign policy, Sewell adds: “I think he thinks it’s very dangerous. And personally, I think he thinks she’s going off course. She’s making reckless decisions. I think she’s settled on an attitude that has lost some of her nuance. And he thinks if he says too much, then he’ll be sidelined, and his ability to influence the outcome will be taken away, and he’ll be replaced by someone much more dangerous.”
Yet Hal walks out, joining his wife in protest, but neither Sewell nor Russell sees his decision as a romantic gesture intended for their spouse.
“The romantic thing is that he took a moral stand,” Sewell says. “But he did the right thing for himself. I think where we are in this story and this place in our lives has nothing to do with their romantic relationship at that time.”
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