Keri Russell Says ‘The Diplomat’ Honors Foreign Service Workers

As “The Diplomat” returns for Season 4, Keri Russell describes the series as a “love letter” to foreign-service workers—especially as real-world political shifts have left many feeling their careers and departments disappearing overnight.

Keri Russell is finishing up shooting “The Diplomat” in Europe when the conversation suddenly snaps to the real world—and the calendar won’t sit still.

She’s trying to remember the timeline. she says. because it’s “all so insane.” Season 2 of the Netflix drama arrived on October 16. 2024. Two weeks later, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States for the second time. When Season 3 came out exactly a year later—10 months after Trump’s inauguration—Russell says he had already dismantled much of the diplomatic corps.

Now, while Season 4 is wrapping, Russell is calling in from a place where the news is also moving. “And now here she was…we were at war with Iran. ” the actress recalls. putting her character’s world into sharper focus. In the series, Russell plays Kate Wyler, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain—someone built to manage political chaos even when it turns into something far more dangerous.

The timing makes Russell laugh, even as it lands like a gut check. “Was Trump’s inauguration really just a year and a half ago?” she says. “God, we’re, like, 80 years old now!”

Season creator Debora Cahn. who previously wrote for “The West Wing” and “Homeland. ” based Russell’s character on Samantha Power. the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Obama who also ran USAID for the entirety of the Biden administration. By the time Russell finally met Power in April 2024. Russell says the agency Power had run for four years was “just…gone.”.

That closeness to real-world politics has changed how Russell watches the world beyond the script. “I’ve definitely paid more attention to politics. that’s for sure. in a way that I didn’t necessarily before. ” she says. “I mean. I’m really attuned now to the subtlety of public messaging in statements that world leaders make. and the finesse and delicate nature of that wording — contrary to the messaging our country seems to be giving the world these days!”.

What makes it harder to ignore, Russell says, is what happens when she’s not acting. She can’t seem to walk through everyday life—standing in line at a grocery store. or at an airport—without someone approaching her. They tell her they were in the foreign service for 30 years. or that they spent time as a war correspondent in Iraq.

Russell says that for many, the show feels like a peek behind the curtain. “My impression is that it’s fun for them to be watching some of the behind-the-curtains stuff that was kind of private in their world. that is now being talked about on a glossy television show. ” she says. “I hope they feel that it’s fun.”.

Over time, she’s come to think of “The Diplomat” as something warmer and more specific than entertainment. She describes it as the cast and crew’s “love letter” to people who dedicate their lives to foreign service. She’s especially drawn to the daily grind she imagines around it: “all the worker bees in all the little tiny hotel rooms who are. like. staying up till three in the morning and getting drunk with each other and maybe having sex sometimes.”.

And she’s thinking about them even more now, with how sharply the profession can be disrupted by elections. Before every season, Cahn and the cast talk to real people in government. For this round. Russell says many of those people told her they didn’t think there was anything to be done. They described having to watch their profession burn down and then wait for it to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Russell says the impact was immediate—and emotional—on how the show’s Season 4 felt in the room. “Some of the people I spoke to were watching their whole departments. thousands of people. lose their jobs — people who had given their lives in service to help people they don’t even know. just to be told to within an hour to get their shit out of there in a box. ” she says. “That stuff definitely affected how we walked into Season 4 and how we played it.”.

Season 3. in Russell’s telling. centered on Kate navigating public appearances while her marriage to Hal (Rufus Sewell) carried sharper fractures underneath. In that season, Kate and Hal appear together in public while consciously uncoupling behind the scenes. Season 4 shifts that pressure into a new direction: Kate tries to recommit to Hal as he dives into his role as vice president to Grace Penn—played by Allison Janney’s POTUS. President of the United States—and Kate finds herself pushed to the back burner.

Russell frames Kate’s reaction as a kind of effort to be accepted in a role that never fits. “She’s trying really hard to be what, in her mind, is the good wife that people want her to be,” Russell says. “Maybe a little less loud, maybe a little less bossy. Obviously, she’s going to fail!”

She also points to what makes Kate hard to contain. Kate believes in her work, and Russell emphasizes that the series doesn’t treat motherhood as a checkbox. “Interestingly, Kate does not have kids, and I love that it’s not even a discussion,” Russell says. “It feels rebellious in some way. because a woman always has to have kids — and if she doesn’t. there has to be some sob story about how she tried and she couldn’t. or she didn’t meet the right person.”.

Season 3’s relationship complications delivered a particular kind of comedic tension, too. Russell says she liked the challenge of defining what the marriage looked like in awkward public moments even as the couple was separated.

One of her favorite scenes involves President Penn’s chief of staff asking about the “cadence of Kate’s visits to D.C.” Russell describes the setup as a moment where it’s clear the couple hasn’t actually agreed on any of it—and then they hash it out in front of her.

Russell also recalls her character’s furious realism in the scene: “Obviously. he’s mad because I’m f—ing somebody else. We’re publicly doing that passive-aggressive, snarky thing of like, ‘Oh, I’ll come whenever I can. I mean. I am also busy with a big job.’ I love those scenes where there’s multiple things at once.”.

In Season 4, Kate doesn’t just accept being sidelined. Russell compares her reaction to Holly Hunter’s in “Broadcast News. ” saying Kate goes “breaking down every door and letting everyone know her opinions about everything. no matter if they want to hear it or not. ” including taking her clothes off and jumping in pools to make her point.

Still, Russell makes memorizing the script sound like its own war—one fought with pages, not weapons. Cahn. Russell says. comes from the Aaron Sorkin school of “The West Wing” and believes in long scenes packed with dialogue and moving parts. For Season 4. Russell says they worked through an unusual workload pattern: “a 16-page scene followed by a 12-page scene and then a nine-page scene.”.

How does she manage it? Russell says she doesn’t rely on a strict system. “There’s no system,” she says. “I usually just get some young kid on set, like, ‘Hey, come run this with me over and over.’”

Even so. she’s grateful for the chance to deliver Cahn’s writing—dialogue that aims at global stakes while staying focused on the mess of real life. Russell says Cahn captures “what it’s like to do very important things but still be worried about the minutiae of your own life. or the brutality of relationships that you have chosen. and still make it funny.”.

For now, Russell is absorbed in the work, the locations, and the pace of it all. “For now. she’s having a blast delivering Cahn’s dialogue and hanging out in a beautiful European location. ” the actress says. And she’s already feeling the end coming. “When [this show] ends, it’s going to be such a f—ing bummer,” Russell says. “Like, I’ll have to go back to not-smart, not-funny writing and not these amazing locations?. What the f—?. I’m going to have to just be someone’s girlfriend in an action movie or something!”.

Then she laughs at herself, correcting the thought almost immediately: “She quickly corrected herself, laughing. ‘I love that I said I’d be the girlfriend. At this point, I’d be the mom.’”

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here. Photo by Erik Carter for TheWrap.

Keri Russell The Diplomat Netflix Debora Cahn Kate Wyler Rufus Sewell Allison Janney Samantha Power USAID foreign service