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In the Netflix drama, The Diplomat, Keri Russell plays an ambassador who's thrust into an international incident with massive stakes.
The show combines the tension of Homeland with the administrative drama of The West Wing, which makes sense given that The Diplomat's creator and showrunner worked on both of those shows.
The show just returned for a new season, so it's the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the series.I'm Linda Holmes.
And I'm Stephen Thompson, and in this Encore episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are talking about The Diplomat.
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Joining us today is freelance journalist Christina Escobar.She's the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LatinaMedia.co.Welcome back, Christina.
Thank you so much for having me.
It is great to have you.So Keri Russell stars in The Diplomat as Kate Weiler, a career diplomat who's planning to head to Kabul when she's reassigned and named ambassador to the UK.She doesn't want the job because she thinks it's going to be a
ceremonial tea and crumpets affair, but her presence is necessary after an attack on a British ship kills 41 soldiers.
Soon she's trying to prevent World War III as she negotiates with British leaders, some of whom wish to retaliate swiftly just as soon as they know who's responsible.
Kate's efforts are complicated by the presence of her at least somewhat estranged husband, Hal, who's played by Rufus Sewell.He's a hotshot veteran diplomat in his own right, and while his counsel is useful, he brings a huge amount of baggage.
Plus, Kate soon learns that she's being groomed quietly to replace the Vice President of the United States, which means she's being watched closely by a handler, played by Otto Essendoh, who's reporting back to the White House and dealing with his own secret relationship with the CIA operative, played by Ali Ahn.
Kate is aided and sometimes thwarted in her efforts by dashing British diplomat Austin Denison, played by David Jesse.Their chemistry looms large as the show progresses and Kate's marriage gets more and sometimes less volatile.
So you've got international intrigue, spycraft, diplomacy, government, romance.It's all here.The Diplomat was created by Deborah Kahn, who's also the showrunner.She previously worked on The West Wing and Homeland.
All eight episodes of The Diplomat are streaming now on Netflix.Linda, I'm going to start with you.What do you think of The Diplomat?
Well, as you described it, I was like, sounds like television.Like, as you sort of described the plot and the structure of it, I went into this expecting that I was going to find it to be kind of regular TV, plus I really love Keri Russell.
But I really liked this show.I thought it actually was about a lot of interesting things, particularly it's about extremely competent people who are good at their jobs.
And it's about how different competencies that people have are used and not used and valued and not valued.I think it's a super interesting show about gender and work. and marriage.
There are these moments where there are very fine lines between what's diplomacy, what's flattery, and what is just kind of indulging, powerful people.I love those tensions.
And one thing that I thought was interesting, the show has really, the publicity around the show has really pushed the fact that Deborah Kahn worked on the West Wing, worked on Homeland.It
doesn't mention very much that she had a long run on Grey's Anatomy.It's almost like maybe the more prestige-y shows are the ones they want to talk about.But Grey's Anatomy has had a lot going for it.
It's an incredibly successful show, and it does invest in the interiority of women.
When I sort of put all that together, it felt to me like it's got a little DNA from Homeland, which is like the interest in international relations and kind of process nerds when it comes to diplomacy and protocol and things.
It has definitely some West Wing DNA.I think the dialogue is often quite funny.I think the show is often quite funny, but not in a way that is as affected as sometimes the West Wing was.And then I think it has a lot of
good kind of relationship-y show DNA like Grey's Anatomy.So I really, I wound up being super into this show and I thought it was a lot more interesting than I expected.It's television, right?It's not, I wouldn't call this show cinematic.
I don't think it's particularly inventive with structure or form or anything like that.But I really, really was into the story.
How about you, Christina?
I liked it too.You know, I love Kerry Russell as well, and I loved The Americans, which is another show about marriage and politics.The Diplomat is not in the same league as The Americans.It's not fair to compare them.
To me, it felt more like a cross between like Scandal and Madam Secretary.
Especially in the first couple of episodes, I think before the show finds its footing, it sort of ventures, it dips its toe into melodrama, but then pulls back to be more a show about politics and relationships and a little bit more serious.
There were some things that irked me about the show. do not like the convention where we have a powerful woman, but she makes a continuous point about being different from other women.
In this show, Keri Russell's character is continuous being like, no dresses, even though when she does put on a dress, she looks amazing and gets to be on the cover of fashion magazines.It's very silly.
I can be powerful, but I have to differentiate myself from other women.I have to bring other women down is irksome to me.But I would say that other than that, there are a lot of really interesting relationships and plays with relationships.
And I would say one of the ways this show succeeds is showing a marriage in trouble.I feel like a lot of times we get either 100% healthy relationships, which is rare, but we get that, or we get hyper abusive relationships.
and here we have the central couple unsure of each other.
There are real problems, perhaps problems that they cannot overcome, but also there's a tension there, a sexual tension, an intellectual tension, a colleague tension that I found really interesting.
It was so imperfect in a way that it feels like real relationships often are, right?It's about which compromises
you're willing to make, which compromises you aren't willing to make, all of that, except for there was one scene where there was physical violence between the couple that was played for laughs that I just, I don't think domestic violence is funny.
That was my other large concern.
Yeah, I hear you on that scene.It's definitely played as kind of a silly, she's attacking him, she's so mad.Tonally, it doesn't quite work, I agree with you there.
I think on balance, this show ended up, for me, scratching an itch I didn't quite know I had.In the last few years, I've binged the entirety of The West Wing, which I had never really watched when it was originally on the air.
And I binged the entirety of Designated Survivor, which is a much worse show.These are both kind of process shows about government.And this show has enough of that to scratch that itch.
To Linda's point about just how interesting it is to watch kind of diplomacy in action and watch people who are good at their jobs in action, I really enjoyed and appreciated that.And I didn't have
the response that I so often had when I was watching shows like Designated Survivor and The West Wing, where I would often sit there with my arms folded like, that would never happen that way.
I don't follow diplomacy as much as I follow government, and so maybe diplomats are watching this show like, oh my god, you would never do that.But to me, there was a plausibility to this show.
that I appreciated, and I thought it did a nice job – and tell me if you agree – I thought it did a nice job of dealing with kind of shifting international threats and handling them in a nuanced way that didn't get bogged down in this kind of, this is who the enemy is.
I would agree.I sometimes get tired of shows about the great American and European empires, like that clashing of world powers.I feel like that story has been told quite a lot.
It is hard to say something new, but I felt like this show, The Diplomat, did a good job here because they were able to
portray how people at these high levels of power see themselves as these like world powers who are doing all of these amazing, wonderful, world-changing things, but also to complicate it a little bit and show where they are sometimes making mistakes, how they bring in perhaps some false assumptions, and also how perhaps that is not always true, that sort of coming in as this understanding of
these are the world powers and they are the only ones that matter.I thought it did a better job than most and avoided some of the cliches that make me feel tired when it's that type of conflict.
Yeah, definitely.I agree.It looks at the beginning like it's going in the direction of a kind of more standard idea of good guy, bad guy.
And then over time, it actually pulls out and you start to understand it is also about how some powers, the US and the UK among them, can certainly choose
to exploit essentially racism, you know, to sort of solve their international conflict problems by sort of exploiting assumptions that are wrong that people already have.I appreciated that.
I appreciated how direct it was at times about the history of American and UK diplomacy and the reputation that it has, which is not glowing, depending on where you are in the world, to say the least.
There is a moment when there's a very pitched argument between Kate, the Keri Russell character, and Billie, who is the chief of staff to the president.She's one of the people who's kind of working in the background.
And then Idra, who is the CIA station chief in London.And these three women have this conversation about whether to kind of push and pressure an existing source of Kate's.And one of the things that Kate ultimately says to them is,
do not be an infinitely ravenous American."
I sort of sparked to that line because just understanding that that is a perception that people have in the world, the infinitely ravenous American, despite the fact that she comes off as a kind of caring and competent person, recognizing that history within American approaches to international relations,
I thought was really interesting.
And I want to stress also, I also just enjoyed this as like, a show with a lot of fun workplace dialogue, a show with a bunch of hot people who you can't really tell who's going to wind up interested in each other as their capacity as hot people.
There are some very hot men in this show. I have to say, which for my own personal preferences, I enjoy that.But there are also just a lot of very charismatic people.
And I really agree with Christina that the complexity of the marriage is very interesting, because I kept getting to the point where I was like, I have strong feelings about this husband, about whether I want her to be in this relationship with this husband.
But like, the show pulls back every time it kind of makes it look like it's going to be a simple question about the marriage, it kind of pulls back and complicates it again.
I think Rufus Sewell is a really good bit of casting here because you really kind of think you're getting a certain kind of guy, and then he's revealing layers that make you at least understand why she hasn't kicked him to the curb 10 years ago.
I like that relationship as part of this show.I did want to ask, both of you how you feel about the way this show is being rolled out.Like it's being dropped in as eight episodes all in one gulp on Netflix.They're not rolling it out a week at a time.
Do you think that's the right way to experience this show?Would you have liked a slower burn?
Yeah, my reaction to this was like, binge it, binge it, because I binged it.I started watching it and tore through the entire thing.So I felt like binging it was right.I also think it complicates some of its stories over time.
So I'm happy to kind of not have people necessarily.I'm happy that if you watch the first episode and you think, this seems like it has some promise, but it also seems like it's maybe a little too simple.
that it kind of complicates itself and you can kind of get into that more quickly because it is bingeable.I would be a binge person on this for sure.
Yeah, I had the exact same experience.I think there were times even in kind of some of the middle episodes where the show moved a little more slowly.
then I probably would have wanted if it were something that I was expected to kind of go back and re-find every week.
I think it was easier to kind of stick with it through occasional little slow patches, just kind of having it on and barreling ahead at the end.
You know, like there is generally something at the end of each episode that makes you want to click through and watch the next episode, but I'm not sure I would have necessarily gone back after the first couple episodes and stayed with it.
So I think, I think this was the right way to go with this.
I felt like it took a while for the show to get going and then particularly the first two episodes didn't do the rest of the show justice because they felt more simple.They didn't have the levels of complication.
They were a little tonally different, I would say, also as it got set up.I think being able to sort of push through, see more and get to the really good stuff, I would say by the end I was like, I'm ready for a ninth episode.
I'm ready for a season two, which I wasn't expecting to feel when I watched those first two episodes.So I think this is one that's It definitely works to watch them in rapid succession.
Yeah, and I hope that there is enough in those first episodes that suggests that it is a thoughtful show that will kind of keep people going.
My favorite detail from the early going of this show is when they're trying to set up this really complicated marriage that on the one hand has a lot of conflict but is also really intimate in a very particular way.
There is a moment when Kate has Hal smell her armpits in this very, like, casual, this is clearly just a thing they do. It sounds weird, but, like, that is sort of the moment where you realize these people have no boundaries with each other at all.
They have no walls up.They are completely merged as a single person.She just sticks her pit in his face, and she's totally comfortable doing that.And I think it's a great relationship moment.
I think you're hitting on something that I really liked about this show, which is that that relationship, as much as they have that like kind of extreme levels of intimacy and familiarity, their relationship is still a puzzle to you as a viewer.
You're still trying to piece together exactly what the terms of their marriage are.And I think that is also really interesting that I still don't feel like I know as much as I have
that great shorthand of like, they have this level of intimacy, they have this professional relationship, they have these past experiences together.There are still all these things I'm still wondering about after eight episodes.
And I'm excited about that with this show.Another thing I got to say, I really appreciate, well, we're just kind of tacking on things we appreciate about the show. I appreciated just the visuals.
I think it would have been so easy to set this entire thing in windowless, Pentagon-type, you know, war rooms.You just know that exact kind of dingy lighting I'm talking about.
And they do a nice job with this show of really taking it into castles and courtyards in ways that give it some real visual appeal as well beyond the dialogue, which I think really snaps. Well, we want to know what you think about The Diplomat.
Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH.That brings us to the end of our show.Christina Escobar, Linda Holmes, thanks so much for being here.
Thank you, bud.Thank you so much for having me.
This episode was produced by Hafsah Fathima and edited by Jessica Reidy, and Hello, Come In provides our theme music.Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all tomorrow.
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