For all of its political intrigue and tactical power plays, The Diplomat creator Debora Cahn said that her award-winning show is really about the ultimate strategic alliance.
“I didn’t know that it was gonna be a show about marriage,” the Emmy-nominated showrunner said Sunday night at a FYC event in Beverly Hills, Calif. “It seems quite obvious now, but it really escaped me for a long time.”
Cahn joined a panel discussion with star and executive producer Keri Russell, cast members Rufus Sewell, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Ali Ahn, Ato Essandoh, casting director Julie Schubert, and editor Gary Levy at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Amid a diplomatic crisis with Great Britain, Season 3 of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series takes a close look at two different marriages and brings them together to compare and contrast. As Kate Wyler (Russell) navigates life as a diplomat and potential vice presidential candidate after Grace Penn (Janney) ascends to the top spot following the president’s untimely death, things are turned on their head as Kate’s husband, Hal (Sewell), gets the No. 2 job instead.
In the scorching Episode 6, set at Penn’s home on Long Island, N.Y., the Wylers are dealing with their own marital dynamics as President Penn exerts a noticeable power over first gentleman Todd (Whitford).
“It was so f–king fun, and they had such a good time, and it was so fun to write,” Cahn told Gold Derby about that episode, “Amagansett,” which saw domestic power struggles play out among the international ones.
“It was so great to see Rufus and Keri working with people who play at their level. They do that all the time with our cast, but as a couple, it’s a really dynamic and exciting relationship,” she added. “It was great to see the Todd and Grace relationship develop and unfold and be different in so many ways from the Kate and Hal relationship, and then kind of horribly the same in some ways.”
For Russell and Sewell, the tug-of-war between their roles is what helps keep the show exciting.
“One thing that was great for us was a kind of shift in the dynamic between us in terms of who was up and who was down, because that gives us so much to play with,” Sewell told Gold Derby.
“And that’s the way long-term relationships are,” the Emmy-nominated Russell added. “Someone’s always the pursuer. It happens in cycles, and someone else is doing it the next time.”
Cahn told Gold Derby that “Amagansett “was the episode that proved for her that Janney and Whitford, who arrived on the show in Seasons 2 and 3, respectively, fit seamlessly into the cast.
“It was going to be the moment where we were going to really get to know Todd,” she said of the episode, “and where we took advantage of the emotion of what happens if you put these four people in a room together.”
With Janney and Whitford now promoted to series regulars, expect more from the West Wing alums in Season 4.
“Job security, overall, is great,” Janney quipped to Gold Derby, adding that it’s been “fun to connect” with such a complicated character as Grace.
“What you get is you have a long relationship with the character. You have a long, deep relationship with the cast. You have a sense of community. You have a long relationship with an audience,” Whitford told Gold Derby. “No shade to the film people. They can still sit up front at the Globes, but we’re having a good time.”
While not a married couple, CIA Station Chief Eidra (Park) and Deputy Chief of Mission Stuart (Essandoh) struggle through their own relationship strains in Season 3.
“I think the thing that’s really cool is that Eidra is in a place where she’s out of moves. She’s sort of in this professional purgatory and no one is coming to her aid, and she’s taking this big risk,” Park explained on the panel. “And Stuart is the only one that’s really trying to help, however poorly, save her job. And I think that that kind of cracks her open. Whether she wants to admit it or not, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s staying by her.’ And so I think that’s really lovely.”
Essandoh says that all of these characters are “mission-driven” as far as diplomacy, but there’s something more as well.
“There’s also the personal mission of being a human being and in a relationship and being thoughtful about a relationship and being intentional,” the actor said. “I think that’s what Stuart’s trying to do in these moments.”
In the finale, Hal and Grace get conspiratorially close, hinting more at “world domination,” Todd points out, rather than an affair. All of the scheming builds to a final episode that has its own harrowing implications, even if it doesn’t include a literal explosion or shocking death as in previous seasons.
“It was the most terrifying finale to write,” Cahn said on the panel. “When you’ve achieved a finale by blowing a bunch of people up, and then you’ve achieved a finale by having a president killed, having an interesting shift in one character’s attitude toward another character is like such a terrifying disaster.”
The Diplomat team is already in production for Season 4, which is expected to stream on Netflix later this year.
“We’re having a really good time doing it and we got to the point where we know what we have and so it was like, let’s let it f–king rip,” Cahn said about the upcoming season. “Gary just finished editing an episode where we put [Russell and Sewell] in a room for 16 pages, and you watch that episode, you watch the scene, it just flies by.”
Exploring all the relationships will be a significant part of next season, Cahn added.
“It’s really incredible to know what you have and to write for these three couples and know that they’re in unbelievably different places in their [relationships], and you get to put them up next to each other and see,” she said, “like watching Stuart and Eidra deal at the relatively beginning stages of a long-term relationship, working out the things that you’re seeing just fall to pieces on the other side and then hopefully get duct taped back together.”
