‘The Diplomat’ showrunner Debora Cahn on the ‘complicated and intractable’ world of foreign policy [Exclusive Video Interview]
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
When Debora Cahn was a writer for the spy drama “Homeland,” “We had an ambassador come in” who “started talking about what she did in her career,” and they were like “superhero stories that she was telling, just crazy swings from having to be in somebody’s palace and complimenting the china to dodging bombs so that you could pin down a warlord and negotiate some sort of ceasefire.” Now Cahn has created “The Diplomat,” a drama series with a heroic ambassador of its own. We talked to Cahn as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV showrunners panel. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEEKeri Russell interview: ‘The Diplomat’
“The Diplomat” follows Kate Wyler (Emmy nominee Keri Russell), who is appointed as the new United States ambassador to the United Kingdom, where she is immediately thrust into an international crisis that could lead to all-out war. “I had always wanted to set a show in a geopolitical foreign policy world,” Cahn explains. “I felt like a lot of the stories that get told about that are ‘us good, them bad.'” Instead of black-and-white heroes and villains, she wanted to explore the “combinations and permutations of relationships that you have when you’ve got two countries. You add a third country, and it just gets exponentially more complicated and intractable.”
More from GoldDerby
In a way, that makes “The Diplomat” an optimistic series. It imagines that “not all politicians are corrupt and venal. If they’re trying to do their best, and if other people in other countries are trying to do their best, and we are still in the shit show that we’re in, that’s interesting.” Perhaps that’s “depressing because this is the product of good people trying and still failing, but it feels to me like a more compelling thing to look at.”
PREDICTthe 2024 SAG Awards nominees
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
Best of GoldDerby
Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
