Ali Ahn on ‘The Diplomat’ Season Two, ‘Agatha All Along’ and Auditioning From a Sailboat
Ali Ahn never expected to be doing one of the most important auditions of her career from the galley of a sailboat. The actress was at home for a few days in the midst of shooting “The Diplomat,” the hit Netflix show on which she plays Eidra Park, when she learned of an audition for a spinoff of “WandaVision.”
“It was one of those things where I was leaving that day and I kind of threw it together thinking, ‘I’m never going to get this job.’ It was so far, and in that way I was really relaxed — I was just like, ‘I’m not going to get it, it doesn’t matter,’” Ahn says.
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With that, she promptly left for a very “not glamorous” camping trip via sailboat with a friend and a group of strangers.
“I remember thinking, ‘watch me get a callback while I’m on this fricking camping trip,’” she says. Sure enough, the callback came as they were out at sea.
“I’m out in the middle of the sea, and everyone that I’m on this boat with, we’re in tight quarters, no one is an actor, I have no makeup with me, and they’re sending me new material. And I had to basically ask these people [to help],’” she says. “I put my iPhone on a wine box, and they had to hold it, and I was shooting it in the galley of this boat. It was just crazy.”
At this point, she still knew very little of what the mysterious Disney+ Marvel project entailed, only that she was being asked to shoot a post-battle scene (which ultimately didn’t make it into the series), and that the audition would be seen by Jac Schaeffer, the show’s creator.
“I just remember being like, ‘this is mortifying that this is my first time meeting this person,’” Ahn recalls. “I have to do this battle scene by myself. It’s humiliating as an actor to be shooting a battle scene by yourself. But thank god, this scene that I had to shoot on the boat was a post-battle scene, so the fact that I was sweaty and had no makeup on worked.”
Ahn would land the role of course, which she would come to learn was for the part of Alice Wu-Gulliver in “Agatha All Along.” The show is set after “WandaVision” and follows Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness and a new coven of witches, which include Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata and Ahn.
Ahn, who is 43, had been a fan of “WandaVision,” despite not typically being a fan of the superhero genre.
“I thought the writing and the concept of the show was so radical for Marvel, and I’m not a Marvel person,” she says. “I was so impressed with that show, so I was really excited by the opportunity to work with that team from ‘WandaVision.’”
She was drawn to Alice’s mystery; the witch is a former police officer who, it becomes clear soon after she’s introduced, has much more to her than meets the eye.
“I’m always interested in what’s underneath the surface, and I think what was exciting to me was she’s so emo and she’s got this really tough, edgy, anti vibe, but the truth is she’s the mushiest of all of the witches, I think,” Ahn says. “I was really interested in how much you can present a mask to the world.”
Alice is, in many ways, not all dissimilar from Ahn’s character Eidra in “The Diplomat.” The show, which became a hit on Netflix after Season One, stars Keri Russell as the American ambassador to the United Kingdom. Eidra is the CIA station chief in London who works closely with Russell’s Kate Wyler.
“I think that they both present a kind of toughness,” Ahn says of the two characters. “People probably perceive both of them as tough, but I think that what’s different is that Alice is so sensitive and actually so emotional, but she’s hiding all of it. Eidra, her emotional level is just calm. She is sort of a straight shooter and she may not be demonstrative in her emotions, but she’s not worried about what anyone else thinks about her and she’s handling business. But the shell of it is probably someone who feels like maybe a little intimidating.”
Ahn describes “The Diplomat,” Season Two of which arrived over the weekend, as like “Christmas.”
“It was so great to have a positive response to something that was so wonderful to make. Keri Russell is a dream to work with and we’re all really tight and it’s like summer camp because we’re in London all together,” she says. “There’s just such a respect that we have for each other, and we just have so much fun on that set.”
Between the two series, Ahn knows she’s found a rare dream work situation.
“I’m just so lucky that I got to work with two casts that are both so extraordinarily talented and collaborative.”
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