Why Keri Russell Loves ‘Being a Mess and Dropping F-Bombs’ on ‘The Diplomat’
As she enters her third season of work on The Diplomat, Keri Russell’s commute to England has gotten a lot shorter. While the political thriller’s first two seasons — featuring Russell’s Emmy-nominated performance as Kate Wyler, the harried U.S. ambassador to Great Britain (Season Two premieres on Netflix Oct. 31) — were filmed entirely in and around London, Season Three’s production is already underway a lot closer to home. Though the series remains set in the U.K., filming will take place this year in Brooklyn, where Russell lives with her partner (and former Americans co-star), Matthew Rhys, and their children.
“It feels bizarre, because we have some of our same internal sets, but here in New York,” says Russell by phone. “I can ride my bike to work. I am enormously grateful, because I still have kids at home, and so does Deborah Cahn, who writes the show, and it’s just immensely important to be close to home and not leave your kids to be raised by wolves.”
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Here, Russell speaks with Rolling Stone about what real-life diplomats think of Kate Wyler, the chaotic relationship between Kate and her duplicitous husband Hal (Rufus Sewell), getting to work with Allison Janney in this new season, memories from her time on The Americans, and more.
I won’t spoil it here for the readers but there’s a key event in the new season that overlaps with real-life geopolitics in the year 2024. It’s funny how that worked out.
It’s amazing, because all that storyline was written so long ago, before the actors strike, before the writers strike. And we started filming that so long ago. I hope people know how long ago we did this, so it wasn’t like, “You know what we should do? This is fun and topical!” Because I’ve been like, “Fuck, I hope they know how long a TV show takes to make.” There was this path, the train was going, and then the world caught up with us. I’ve already read everything of Season Three. It’s so good in the way I want things to be good, and I just can’t believe that it’s still getting better.
When you say it’s good in the way you want things to be good, what does that mean?
I just think it’s rare to have a good job. The jobs that you think are really great are far and few between. I’ve been lucky enough to have a couple of them. This one, for this time in my life, to be able to be my age, and a girl, and to be doing something that feels so smart, so in a world that I’m interested in, and funny at the same time and not depressing… The world is heavy enough for me. I so appreciate coming to work and working on snappy, sassy dialogue, and being a mess, and dropping the F-bomb all the time. It’s full of substance, but it’s also fun, and that is fucking unbelievable to do something like that right now.
You made this season a long time ago. You’re currently making a new season that will air while the audience is living through a different presidential administration than our current one, and life could be very different depending on who wins. Have you and Deborah and everyone else talked about how this might play to viewers one way versus the other way?
My god. What a wild time. Whatever your take is, you’ll either be watching it with longing for what could have been, or we’ll be kind of living it. I don’t know. It’s strange that it all became so topical. The cool thing about Deborah is, she just writes what the best idea is in her head. I don’t think it matters what’s happening politically, I think it could work in our favor both ways. But we don’t really talk about that.
As Kate, you’re doing a lot of things, but among them is playing a woman who is constantly being scrutinized for her clothes and hair. Is that something you can relate to?
All women have to live by these bizarro standards, and especially if you’re in the public eye. Of course I have felt that. I try to limit my exposure to the wider world so that I can’t be criticized as much. I get enough of it at home from teenage kids. But of course. It’s a very real thing that women — especially in politics, people care about the way their hair looks, and what they wore. Just a reality. It’s a real thing in this country still. The way Deborah handles it, it’s so great. I never get this vibe from Deborah that she hates men. She just is like, this is the reality, and this is this crazy person, who is this hot mess of a firecracker. And, yes, people have thoughts about her hair and her clothes. And I love the way I look [in this show]. It is so fun to play this character. I love it. I think I’m cool, and I like my hair and my same black suit all the time.
There was that moment where the head of your network was blaming a Felicity ratings dip on you daring to get a haircut.
I know, it’s wild. It’s a really unusual world that we live in. It is what it is. People really care about women’s hair. I mean, are there worse things? I’ll take it. If that’s my cross to bear to get this great life and to be in these parts, then fuck it. I’ll take it.
Kate continues to deal with wardrobe issues throughout Season Two, including a scene in the premiere where she has to borrow a man’s suit because she realizes she shouldn’t be seen in public in what she’s wearing at the time. Professionally, have you ever been through anything on the level of what she’s constantly dealing with with her clothes?
When I was giving birth to my third kid. I had given birth to my second kid at home, by the fire. It was super-idyllic, at Christmastime, all the hippie-dippy things, in the bath… It was perfect, and she was easy. I was taking out the trash the next day, it was so easy-breezy. And then my third kid, same deal: Brooklyn, in my apartment, same midwife, and it was such a different birth. I realized, “Uh-oh, something is very wrong with this giant baby.” We tried at home for a very long time, until finally we were like, “I’m gonna go to the hospital now.” I was trying to walk out naked, and the midwife was like, “You’re going to have to wait, and we’re going to put a jacket on you before you walk out the door naked, crowning a child through your vagina.” And they put a little trench coat on me, and we headed to the hospital. Nobody needs to see that picture.
When Diplomat Season One debuted, one thing I heard a lot from people in the business who know you is, “Keri must really enjoy getting to curse this much in character.” Are they correct?
Well, it is fun! What’s not fun about that? It’s such good writing. It’s so fun to be a girl and let it rip. [Kate is] such a dude in the room, which is so fun. She’s such a fuckin’ smartypants, bossy, get-shit-done [person], doesn’t care what people think. And it’s really fun to get to be that person — that direct, brash American in the land of polite English pleasantries. My guy [Rhys] is Welsh, and I always say when we’re over there, sometimes there are things that are said to you that are about five sentences long that I as an American can do in two words. Just get to the point. But yeah, it’s highly enjoyable.
Besides the profanity, what else drew you to the role? You hadn’t done a series in quite a while, even factoring in the pandemic.
I was not looking for something. I was liking my nice, quiet life of bike rides and taking care of little kids. It’s just, the writing was so good. She had captured something so specific about this person with all the insecurities and a real focused brain to get stuff done, and then this marriage that was so out-of-control, and romantic and awful and funny. It’s still so fun. What Deborah does so well is, she’s plopping you into these worlds and scenes that are super-important and full of high stakes, but you know how that person feels, and that’s the more important part of the scene. Like, you know that she just spilled something on herself before she’s gonna go see the president, she looks ridiculous, and she’s trying to wipe it off her pants. And everyone knows what that feels like. Deborah’s genius is finding the minutiae or the ridiculous or the funny in very important moments.
This is a political drama and a thriller and a comedy of manners and a rom-com. Are there parts of the show you particularly enjoy doing?
I really love the funny stuff. I really love the [laughs] stupid getting-in-fights with the husband, and being embarrassing and ridiculous and making a fool of myself and being dirty, or falling down the stairs with the person you’re trying to be cool in front of. I love doing that stuff and trying to make it seem real or embarrassing. It’s so fun. It’s amazing to have someone like Allison Janney on our show [now]. That scene of her falling down the stairs in Primary Colors, I’ve watched that so many times. It’s so good. That’s the kind of stuff that I think is so good when you can pull it off.
There are plenty of lighter moments in Felicity and some other things you’ve done, but it does feel rare that you’ve gotten to play a role as overtly comedic as this one can be. Why do you think that is?
Who knows? It’s just what people see you as. It’s what comes your way. I really believe in the wave of it all, taking the ride of “this is what’s up, and something else will come later.” It’s not all screwball comedy. The heart of the show to me is the Hal and Kate stuff, and those massive fights. I think they’re so good and jagged and real and raw. I keep using the word “embarrassing,” and they’re so immature and specific and real. I love that you can take these big swings of that ridiculous fight in the bushes where they’re physically fighting each other, and then anchor that with the end of Season One with that massive fight about what happened in Afghanistan, and how she thinks he’s a bad guy and did bad shit that she morally finds questionable, and how that fractures a relationship. We just get this chance to do this really fun, juicy, light, spicy thing. I’m so grateful.
The tone of a show that viewers watch isn’t necessarily the tone of what it’s like making the show. The Americans was a very intense drama, but whenever I was on the set, you seemed to be doing just fine in between takes. Was that a difficult show to do or not?
When something is pretty dark, I tend to get really light and silly around it, because you’re trying to keep yourself afloat. If you’re dark and serious all the time, it’s such a bore. I was also working with Matthew, my guy, who is incredibly funny. We would just be laughing so much. It wasn’t hard, because I was so in love with Matthew. And we were making a show where the writing was so exceptional, was so critically adored — that never happens. We look back on that time and just marvel at it. “We did that! That was so cool!” What was hard was working superlong hours and raising little kids and shooting in the polar vortex outside in Eighties leather miniskirts. But if you can harness this bizarre job and make it work as the adventure you want it to be, you cannot beat it. For me, that special recipe is taking really long breaks in between projects. That’s what saves me and keeps me interested in things. I think people get bored of actors. They certainly would get bored of me. So taking long breaks gives everyone a chance to forget about me and then go, “Oh, I’ll watch something for a second with her, until I get bored again.”
Have you and Matthew ever talked about what you think happened to Elizabeth and Philip after the show ended?
No. But there’s this cool group of Americans fans, including this awesome girl named Tori, who made this beautiful book for me about Elizabeth, and brought it to me when I was doing a play a few years ago. It was so cool, amongst many other amazing things that fans did for us during that show. But she contacted Matthew [online] recently and said there was a group of them that got together, and that they all knew what happened to Phil and Henry. They all thought they were going to be fine. They weren’t sure about Elizabeth and Paige. They all had big arguments about that.
I’ve thought about this over the years. Not long after Elizabeth and Paige go back to Russia, the Berlin Wall falls, and suddenly there’s McDonald’s in Red Square, and Elizabeth is probably not happy about any of this. But then Putin comes, and I can’t decide whether she would be in favor of Putin because he’s standing up to the West, or if she’d feel like he’s perverting the cause that she believes in for his own ends.
I’ve really thought about two things. Number one, that couple, the real couple [who inspired The Americans], when that mom walks off the plane and Putin is there to greet her, and he gives her flowers, the mom cries when she sees Putin. He’s like a rock star. It’s like her husband and kids are nothing to her, and she’s meeting the Russian Bruce Springsteen. That was amazing to me. And also, slightly eerie, Putin has these hidden sons; he had them hidden away in some castle somewhere, and he had them with this young Olympic rhythmic gymnast who’s 40 years younger than him. And you look at that girl when she’s young, and it looks like Elizabeth!
Have you heard from actual diplomats about your current show?
A few. Probably the ones who hate it are like, “Fuck off. Don’t ever call us again. You’re embarrassing us.” We [on the show] are saying this out loud: This is meant to be fictional but a love letter to the State Department. We are such fans. Samantha Power is my hero. They are doing the best work, the hardest work, for zero thanks most of the time. I’ve had the incredible fortune of becoming quite friendly with Ambassador Jane Hartley, who is the real ambassador to the Court of St. James’ in London. She is beyond cool, so smart, so funny, so fashionable, so easy. I’ve had dinners at the real Winfield [House, the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in London] with her, with Hillary Clinton at the table, Barack Obama. She is incredible. You watch those people in action, and there’s no way I could do what they do. She knows everyone in the room, everything that’s going on. She introduces people with ease, with such factual knowledge and prowess of the political moments, and she’s a delight to be around. And she dresses really nice. Not like Kate. And I had, through The Americans, met [former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations] Samantha Power when she was at the White House with Obama. She turned around to me at an event with her beautiful long red hair and gave me her card, and said, “The Russian representative to the United Nations and I talk about your show all the time! We go out and have drinks and talk about it.” I’ve met some incredible human rights lawyers, people doing way more important things than I am, and I’m so lucky. They let me come just be the clown at the dinner, it’s so much fun. Who knew that a Mickey Mouse Club, doesn’t-have-a-college-degree [person] would get to do such cool stuff?
What is your chill level when you’re around people like this?
Sweating bullets, pounding alcohol, to just try to numb the nerves, but always just walk away high and marveling at the moment and getting to be around these people that are so inspiring. I just love talking to them. They’re so alive, in a way that is unique and intoxicating to be around.
Outside of the diplomatic sphere, what do people who watch the show say to you about it?
People are really good about it. They say, “I binged the whole thing in two days.” I have a friend in my neighborhood who’s a writer, and she’s like, “My mom told me about this show, it’s very sexy!” We were finishing up in London, and I was out to dinner with Ambassador Hartley at this beautiful restaurant, and Rufus was with us, and another actor. We ran into a pretty famous couple, they’re writer-directors, and it was amazing, because they had seen the show. People usually like to kid Rufus, “Oh, you’re so bad!” And the wife said, “No, he’s not. He’s not bad. He loves her! I think this show is so romantic.” And I thought, “They get it!” Yes, it’s a hot mess, but that’s the crux of the whole show. They have this magic thing, and they’re trying to make it work amidst this chaos.
There are fans who think Kate should run screaming from Hal. What do you think? Is she smart or stupid to stay in this marriage?
It’s tough to know. It’s funny, because I got to meet Gloria Steinem a few years ago, who loved The Americans. Part of me is like, “I don’t know if she’d like this. Would she judge this and say, ‘Kate! Get out of there!'” I don’t know. That’s the fun. And the great news is, we are deep into Season Three right now, and it evolves. It will be many, many versions of them. The one thing I will say about their relationship is that it’s one of those relationships where they can be totally in love and together, and they can be totally separated and apart, but if they walk into the room together, they will always have that energy. Kate could be in love with someone [else]. He could be in love with someone [else]. And I guarantee you, they walk in the room and they will have that energy. That is just who they are. And part of that is working together, part of that is this mind-meeting that they have. That will not change. So I think there are many stories to tell within that world.
How has it been working with Allison Janney?
Oh my gosh, she’s a dream! She’s everything you want her to be. She is polite and shy at first, and just fucking brings it — formidable, exacting, her intelligence really comes through, and she’s so funny. To the point where we’re in the middle of shooting a real [rat-a-tat noise] scene, and in between takes, we’re standing out in this field together, and she’s going, “What was that dance all the kids did? The floss?” And she and I are flossing to each other in our suits. She’s just game and up for it, and loves life. And it was just us going to dinners in London and drinking and talking about who we think is cute. And all the good things.
This is an important question you’ve just raised: Who do you think is cute?
I’m not going to name names, but she did text me late at night and said, “You know, I’m watching this show, and I don’t think the show is very good, but boy, is he sexy.” You know, just girl stuff!
Who is better at an American accent: Matthew Rhys or Rufus Sewell?
I have to say, they are both really good! I’m gonna take the credit away from both of them and say that it’s because they’re both with American women [in real life]. It’s kind of cheating, because they’re getting a master class every single day of their lives.
Are there certain words that one or the other of them has particular trouble with when they’re playing American?
Matthew always says that “secretary” is just a minefield. He sees it in a script and goes, “Nooo!” “Secretary” and “murderer.” In Perry Mason, he had to say, “He’s a murderer” so many times. Like, “Can I call him something else? Can I call him the bad guy? The killer?” I think the hard R’s in words like “murderer” are tough for a British guy.
Finally, are there any Americans wigs that you particularly miss?
I love them all. For me, the most fun are the really terrible ones, where you look really bad. Like that terrible, homely, orange curly-haired nurse, with orange polyester and bad glasses. I would just take a selfie of myself and send it to my girlfriends, and they’d ask me to please wear that when I met them. Matthew, a favorite of his is the wig he calls the John Denver wig… this little blonde wig with little glasses, and I was probably wearing it while murdering some dude after fucking him.
It’s a strange life you’ve chosen for yourself that you can casually say a sentence like that.
It’s not boring!
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