President dies, Allison Janney becomes president

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from the season 2 finale of “The Diplomat,” now streaming on Netflix.

Season 2 of “The Diplomat” is finally out as promised, just days before the most consequential election of our lifetimes.

Debora Cahn, the show’s creator, wrote this season long before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, so whatever you’ve seen on “The Diplomat” about a Biden-like president and a female vice president isn’t a reflection of those events. When Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), husband of the US ambassador to the United Kingdom, played by Keri Russell, insults that vice president (Allison Janney) and says that the only thing she has accomplished is wearing white, or that it White House doesn’t do that, he even likes her enough to stick her in the back of photos – he’s not talking about Harris. So keep that straight. And vote!

There is a backstory to the making of “The Diplomat” that goes a long way toward understanding where the show came from. I drank some wine – a lot of it, to be honest, with tons of ice – with Cahn and Russell when I interviewed Russell for the Variety cover story published two weeks ago, and we’ve dug into it quite deeply.

Cahn, whose mother was in the Holocaust and rescued by American soldiers in Europe when she was 8 years old, started thinking about a show like “The Diplomat” after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s disastrous term had begun.

“I struggled with the question: How could the brightest and most experienced candidate ever nominated not win?” says Cahn. “And an important piece for me was: What do you do after a president has torn up every treaty and every alliance? And how are we going to function in the world when so much of our global power has been wasted by the destruction of treaties and alliances, the degradation of institutions and the erosion of public respect for the rule of law?”

So Cahn, who has written for “The West Wing” and “Homeland” for years, made an appointment with an ambassador to have lunch in Washington DC in March 2020 to talk about these things, but on the day of the meeting there was this “bad cold” was making the rounds, and it was canceled. That was COVID, of course. Initially, Cahn had the feeling that the project would be destroyed by the lockdown, but later it turned out that all ambassadors were also at home and wanted to talk to each other.

“So Tony Blinken was very easy to reach on the phone,” Cahn says. “Everyone was easy to reach on the phone. Tony Blinken has a family history very similar to mine, and Marie Yovanovitch, who also comes from an immigrant family. All these people were having a nice chat. It was the Trump administration – there were a lot of people that I really respect who were out of work.”

Cahn spoke to forty ambassadors about what they planned to do once Trump was gone. “What are you going to do when this is over?” she asked. “What are you going to do when someone else is in charge and the State Department has hopefully survived? How would you restore our reputation in the world?’ I mean, I take it all very personally because of that 8 year old.

Both Cahn and Russell have tremendous respect for the State Department and the work they do. “Politics aside,” says Russell, “The Diplomat” is a love letter to the State Department. And in those dark years, those people were fired, those people were closed down. So this is a love letter to them and the Foreign Service and what they do. They serve an incredible role in our country and in our government.”

Cahn says, “And whatever a political presidency does, they have to go out…

“…and be there, publicly,” says Russell.

Cahn says, “It doesn’t matter who it is, they have to go out and say, ‘We’re here to work with you.'”

“That’s right,” says Russell.

“We are here to advance democracy around the world,” Cahn said.

For Russell, one of the joys of playing Kate Wyler is humanizing these brilliant statesmen and women who are larger than life. Kate is loosely based on Jane Hartley, the American ambassador to England.

Of Hartley – and, by association, Kate Wyler – Russell says: “She’s at that heavy-hitter meeting because she can stick around. She’s legit. And that is exciting. These people shape world policy. They have to deal with these world personalities. These are the players of our world. And it’s fun to think that these people are still ashamed, messy, complicated, in bad relationships, and insecure. That’s what’s fun, and that’s what our show is trying to do.

So it would have been enough to end Season 2 of “The Diplomat” in the final moments of the penultimate episode, with Hal pinning Kate to their bed doggy-style in his boxer shorts so she literally can’t reach the phone. to call Washington and tell them that she doesn’t want the job as Vice President of the United States because she wants Grace Penn to get it. It would have been a perfect ending to a perfect season if Hal had whispered in Kate’s ear as she was trapped under his weight that it wasn’t Iran or Russia or that buffoon of British Prime Minister Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) or that dodgy old Tory Phillipa Roylin. (Celia Imrie) who was ultimately responsible for the explosion on the British ship that killed forty sailors, but instead her new hero – her new crush! — Penn, current US vice president.

But because Cahn’s “The Diplomat” is an extraordinary ride, and not just a great one, the show went one step further. After much arguing about whether Grace Penn is a monster for blowing up the ship or a hero for saving all of humanity, Hal and Kate come to the conclusion that the U.S. government should be the one to decide. And so Hal goes to CIA headquarters to call the Secretary of State (Miguel Sandoval) to tell him about Grace Penn’s “shenanigans” (like real politicians and news anchors do the crazy things our elected officials do in our name would like to mention). , as Kate confronts Grace Penn on the lawn of the ambassador’s parsonage, telling her that, yes, she, Kate, do wants to fight for the VP job, and “news flash” (as Russell likes to say): You’re a terrorist.

It’s at that moment that Deputy Chief of Mission Stewart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) comes running across the lawn waving a cell phone and says Hal is on the phone and it’s urgent. And this is the crazy, brilliant, totally unexpected ending we now have to live with until Netflix decides to cancel season 3: Hal tells Kate that he didn’t talk to the Secretary of State after all, but instead went straight to the President gone. (Michael McKean), who, upon hearing the news of Grace Penn’s betrayal, became so distraught that he died – damn him died! – which means…

Wait, dozens of Secret Service people are now pouring out of the house and down the stairs and across the big lawn, running toward Kate and Stewart and Grace Penn, because Grace Penn – who is Kate’s new sworn enemy – is now, Hal explains . by telephone, the President of the United States.

When I was writing my story a few weeks ago, Russell, who liked to ruin this ending for me, said afterwards, “Isn’t that so good?” Isn’t that so good? This is how it ends!”

I talked to Essandoh about this last scene, and he told me that when the script for Episode 6 came out, that last scene on the lawn was edited out. “So we get to the read-through,” he says, “and they’ve now released the entire script. And they’re like, ‘Hey, don’t read ahead – just enjoy the spoiler as it happens.’

“So when we get there, I turn the page and see what’s happening and who’s there gasps. But I stood up, picked up the script and threw it across the room.” He laughs. “You know that feeling when you’re in the cinema and you hear, ‘No, Luke, I are you father’? It was one of those moments.”

But what about Grace Penn? How can that monster be president?

When I compared Grace Penn to Cruella de Vil over drinks, Cahn started wringing her hands. She hadn’t intended to make Penn a villain. “I think there are objectively bad people out there,” she says, “and I’m willing to….”

Russell says, “…call them out.”

“But I don’t want to write about it,” says Cahn. “I feel like it’s done. Just like I don’t want to write about infidelity – it happened! (She’s referring to Hal and Kate, whose problem isn’t sex and jealousy, but morality.) “We’ve seen the movie,” she continues, “we’ve seen the TV show—the stories of evil leaders and corrupt, venal heads of state , that all exists. To me it feels a bit like a police outing.

“What if they’re all good,” she then asks, “and they all have good values ​​and they all do their best for their country, and we’re still in the fucking shitshow we’re in now?”

“Yes,” says Russell, “yes.”

“What if this is what you get when the good people do their best work? I actually believe that is what’s happening. I not I think it happens because the bad people got the big jobs – I just think it’s really hard to get it right. So the hope with the Allison Janney story was: Yeah, you go into it and you believe she’s the bad guy. And then hopefully you learn that You would have made the same decision in that situation.”

What is that situation? There’s a scene in the finale where Grace Penn takes a piece of cold-burned wood from the fireplace at the Prime Minister’s house and, under duress, explains to Kate on a large map why she ordered the attack on the British ship: If Britain had not come together over such a national tragedy, and Scotland had gained its independence – which was in the works – then the British base that houses the only nuclear submarines preventing Russia from easily attacking the United States by sea to bomb nuclear weapons, have been closed. and all our lives, and those of the people we love, would have been in great danger. So for whatever reason, Grace Penn decided to save us all without telling the President or anyone else except the people she enlisted to help. When she finishes teaching Kate about these matters, she wipes her charcoal hands on the train of her long black dress and slips away.)

But what about Hal? Is he not going to tell the president about Grace Penn because he thinks she’s evil?

Cahn says, “Who cares if she’s bad? He wants Kate to come to power.”

Because he wants something for himself?, I ask.

Cahn says, “Why are these things mutually exclusive? Does he want the best for her? Yes. Is what’s good for her also good for him? Yes.”

Russell says: “There’s obviously a part of him that’s power hungry. But I’ve done a lot of interviews with Rufus, and he always says he never plays it like it’s a competition. He plays it like he loves Kate, and he believes in her, and that’s what he wants. Then Russell says something she often says in different contexts. “People are complicated. No one is bad at twirling their moustache.’

What about Donald Trump?, I ask.

Russell says, “That bad guy is great to his kids,” she says. “I believe he loves his children.”

Tiffany?

“The photographed children,” she says.