Buckle in for ‘The Diplomat’ Season 2: High Stakes, Fast-Paced, and Better than Ever
Editor’s note: Spoilers for Season 1 of “The Diplomat.”
Viewers would be forgiven for not remembering all the details from the explosive (literally!) Season 1 finale of “The Diplomat.”
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A lot happened in the eight-episode first season — even before the fire-y final moments that found Kate’s (Keri Russell) husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) possibly blown up by a car bomb. At one point, even more international shit was going to go down.
“Because I’m an idiot, I believed that in the first season, the entire plot that is Season 1 and Season 2 would fit into Season 1,” creator Debora Cahn told IndieWire. “We then got to Episode 7, and I started writing 7, and I was like, ‘This is too much plot. This is stupid.'”
Needless to say, the team hit the ground running in Season 2, which picks up immediately after the explosion. In the Season 1 finale, Kate, the titular U.S. diplomat to the U.K., becomes convinced British Prime Minister Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) hired Lenkov to blow up the British ship that killed soldiers and dominated Season 1. As she and Foreign Secretary Dennison (David Gyasi) ponder what to do with that information, Hal, Stuart (Ato Essandoh) and Ronnie (Jess Chanliau) become victims of a car bombing — who all survives is still a big mystery. Additionally, Kate’s having a charged almost-romance with confidante Dennison; and Edria (Ali Ahn) and Stuart are broken up due to his secrecy about future job plans — but still forced to work together. Swirling around all of this? More personal complications for Kate and a recovering Hal.
“It was very important to me to tell a story about a marriage where the central rift in the marriage was not infidelity,” Cahn said. “I felt like it’s been done. And I know a lot of people where the relationship is falling apart over many other things — would that it were so simple that somebody had slept with somebody else! I wanted a marriage that had come together in a professional context and was falling apart over ethical differences in how you handle important work.”
While most viewers won’t have had the day-to-day high-stakes decisions about international conflicts, a thrill of the show is that all the plot maneuvering, ego protection, and big secrets rings true. Credit Cahn, a “Homeland” and “West Wing” vet, as well as her plan to chat up everybody in the space.
“We talked to like 30 ambassadors as we were first researching this series, and a bunch of people from the CIA and policy people and journalists,” Cahn said. “A bunch of them came on staff as consultants. So everything that we write, they read, we have long talks with them where we’re like, ‘What are you worried about that I don’t know to be worried about? What keeps you up at night?’ … And the answer was [similar to] the event that kicks off the series … a misunderstanding about an event in the Persian Gulf that ends up spurring World War III.”
Gulp.
“My hope for what the series is on a philosophical level is we see things that happen on a global scale between our country and other countries, or in national politics,” Cahn said. “And it’s really easy to say, ‘This terrible thing happened because that terrible person was in charge, and they made a bad decision, and they’re a bad person. I don’t find villains all that interesting. I find writing them to be a bit of a bore, and I would much rather put all of our attention on: ‘What if this really horrific thing is happening in the world, and the best people got us there? What if everybody on all sides of a a conflict has good intentions?”
At a minimum, that’s the moment to call in a really good diplomat.
“The Diplomat” Season 2 premieres on Netflix October 31.
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