Why Keri Russell Returned to TV With ‘The Diplomat’

This story about Keri Russell and “The Diplomat” first ran in the drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

It’s a little surprising to learn that Debora Cahn did not write the lead role of her new Netflix show “The Diplomat” — U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Kate Wyler — for Keri Russell. The role requires someone serious but shambolic, beautiful but uninterested in her beauty, smart but susceptible — and, of course, tangled in a love-hate marriage with her husband, Hal, played by lovable rogue Rufus Sewell.

Who else would you want but the woman we know as the charming title character in “Felicity” turned steely spy in “The Americans,” Keri Russell? You know — the adorable person you definitely do not mess with?

But Russell, 47, it turns out, was totally unavailable. “I wasn’t shopping around for a television show,” Russell said via Zoom from London, wearing big cool-dork glasses and voluminous curly hair we never see on the show. Russell wasn’t thinking about her next role, it turns out. “We have kids 15, 11 and 6. Life is really busy.” (“We” is Matthew Rhys, her former co-star on “The Americans” and life partner.)

“Matthew was away finishing ‘Perry Mason,'” she explained. “I’d had a rare, unique experience on ‘The Americans.’ It’s not like I was itching to do something not as good.”

But then showrunner Cahn sent her the script for “The Diplomat,” and Russell couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s about a career diplomat who’d rather be in a war zone like Afghanistan helping disenfranchised women, but who instead ends up in the posh assignment of London, embroiled in geopolitical intrigue while also slated for a Vogue photo shoot. The politics are complex, the dialogue fast, the swearing constant. Russell was down with all that.

“I was like, ‘F—, this is really good,'” she said. “I read the first episode; it’s so specific and funny. Tonally I wasn’t sure how it was going to work.” But it really does work. The show manages to be a droll relationship comedy and also a fast-paced diplomatic thriller. In addition to Russell and Sewell, the show is studded with excellent supporting performances, notably by David Gyasi as British Foreign Secretary and thirst trap Austin Dennison and Ato Essandoh as Chief of Mission Stuart Heyford.

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As Kate, Russell dresses way down, her brown hair stringy and unkempt (at one point an aide quietly brings her a hairbrush, please), her pantsuits uniformly nondescript, her face seemingly free of makeup. All evident sex appeal is buried except when Kate needs sex, and then she climbs on top of husband Hal (Sewell), with whom she also engages in full-on fisticuffs (more on this later).

It’s a fiercely female perspective, not for nothing, and Cahn discovered that the actress, fearless, dove deep, fast. Cahn herself is a veteran of political drama from writing “West Wing” and “Homeland,” both shows with plenty of strong female characters, and is also a working mom. “Keri is not afraid to be a woman who’s constantly falling apart at the seams, and so she’s created a character that people really relate to,” Cahn said. “She’s so alive in every moment and she’s so game, so willing to get down in the dirt with the character. Literally and figuratively.”

Well yeah, about that. The backstory to Kate and Hal is that he was the star diplomat for most of their marriage and is still a big cheese. Now she is stepping into the spotlight, a role in which she is supremely uncomfortable. Beyond that, the couple’s relationship has been strained past the breaking point, and Kate really wants a divorce. But because of circumstances to be named later, political appearances make a divorce difficult if not impossible.

During a high-pressure day that involves the photo shoot, Hal’s irrepressible interference in foreign affairs and lots of witnesses, Kate basically leaps on Hal to pound him with her fists, the two of them rolling into the bushes in a crazy, full-body fight with Kate screaming: “You’re killing me!” as she swings a tree branch in his direction. “We had stunt doubles, but we just went for it,” Russell said. “He was so game, just holding me like a big brother. We were covered in dirt. My skirt was up to my waist.” She paused. “It was a total delight.”

A big part of the pleasure of the show is that crackling energy between Russell and Sewell, who said it came instantly. Neither actor sought to work at the chemistry that was just there. “My ease with Keri and Keri’s ease with me is more about being able to just not worry, ignore each other,” Sewell said. “You’re not trying to help. She’s fine. And she feels the same way about me. We got that. Don’t worry about it. Just move on.”

“It’s erotic for them in a way,” he added. “You know, not just being funny with each other, but also being sharp and not reveling too much in being clever in a joke.”

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Russell has been in the public eye for most of her life, and in entertainment since a teenager. Born in Orange County’s Fountain Valley to a dad who was a Nissan car executive and a stay-at-home mom, she studied dance, and then at 15 won a spot on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” appearing on the Disney Channel for four years.

She got a few small roles in movies but then landed the career-defining title role in “Felicity” in 1998 on the WB channel. In a series created by the then-baby talents (now industry powerhouses) J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves, she played a charmingly relatable young woman figuring out her life, her loves and her value at a New York City university. The show ran for four seasons and became a cultural touchstone.

After “Felicity,” Russell was officially adorable. She acted in plays, had TV roles in “Scrubs” and starred in the critically praised indie “Waitress.” She landed a lead in “Extraordinary Measures,” playing a mother trying to create a stable home for her sick children while seeking a cure for their illness. But it wasn’t until 2013 that she broke into a different category of actress — serious this time — as Elizabeth Jennings, a Russian KGB spy living as an American during the 1980s Cold War. Her voice seemed to drop an octave. In “The Americans,” Russell found another role of a lifetime and a bunch of Emmy nomination but also met Rhys, who played her character’s husband and fellow spy. The show ran for six seasons.

Fast forward to post-pandemic London, with kids and a life partner absorbed in his own TV series. Russell calls herself a “fair weather” actress, not desperate to work. But that changed when “The Diplomat” came along. After reading the script, Russell made a call: She moved her schedule, flew a couple of grandmothers in to help with the kids and made it work.

“It was the first thing I’d wanted to do in a million years,” she said. And it was a chance to play a woman she recognized. Kate, said Russell, is “smart and tough and direct, and bold. She’s bossy. She’s fun to play. And full of all these other contradictions.”

The writing of the character defined Kate very clearly. Still, Russell made some deliberate choices. Russell’s Kate eats like a man, ripping at food with her hands, dunking her bread in her bowl in very unladylike ways. In one scene, she and Hal wander into the embassy kitchen and walk out with a huge rind of cheese, with Kate taking a hunk out of it.

Kate walks like a man too, plodding heavily, her arms akimbo. There’s no trace of Russell’s dancer childhood in Kate. “She’s a guy’s girl,” Russell agrees. “She’s been around. She’s been in tough circles.”

And she wanted Kate to dress in clothes that weren’t trendy or fussy or “overly feminine,” Russell said. On the other hand, when Kate wants to dress to slay — as she does in the final episode of Season 1, wearing a slinky, red, floor-length gown that shows plenty of skin — she knows how.

I asked Russell if she feels a kinship to Kate Wyler. The actress didn’t hesitate. “I do share some qualities with her, for sure,” she said. “In reading it as the uncomfortable minutiae of a person in a very powerful position, doing it clumsily, in her own way.  That was what was interesting about it. These are high-stakes, important rooms. But people still have shitty days, they do embarrassing things or they get embarrassed. Or they just had a fight with their partner.”

The first season of “The Diplomat” ended on a cliffhanger that basically demands you come back for more. And lately, before jumping into a second season, Russell has found herself meeting lots of government officials and diplomats, people who are avidly watching the show and wanting to get to know her. On this particular day, she’d been visiting with the real-life U.S. Ambassador, to the U.K., Jane Hartley, at her real-life home in Regents Park.

Does she think that government muckety mucks in real life talk trash and swear like sailors as they do on the show? Yeah, she kind of does.

“I’m positive Obama walked out of rooms and said, ‘That guy is a dick,’” she said.

Can’t wait for Season 2.

Read more from the drama issue here.