19 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About "The Diplomat" — AKA The No. 1 Show On Netflix Right Now
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🚨This post contains spoilers for The Diplomat Season 1! 🚨
Netflix seems to be on a roll lately. Less than a month after its very successful FBI thriller The Night Agent premiered, its new show The Diplomat, starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell, made a similarly huge splash.
So, to celebrate the new series, here are some behind-the-scenes facts every fan should know:
1.According to Netflix, The Diplomat debuted at No. 1 on the streaming site's weekly global Top 10 TV (English) list, bringing in over 57 million hours of viewing in its first weekend alone.
It also appeared in the Top 10 in 86 countries.
2.The Diplomat isn't series creator Debora Cahn's first outing with the political thriller/drama genre.
She worked as an executive producer on Homeland and a producer on The West Wing.
3.The show marks Keri Russell's first leading role in a TV series since The Americans — another series with heavy political themes serving as the background for a marriage story — ended in 2018.
4.Russell was Cahn's "dream" casting for the role of Kate Wyler.
"I didn't think that we would be able to get her, and I was really excited when she agreed to be a part of this," she told Netflix's Tudum.
5.In fact, Keri was all set to turn down the role because she didn't want to do another TV series so close to The Americans ending.
"No, I was not looking to do another series," Russell told Collider. "I had such a good run with The Americans that it just felt like such a good place to leave it. There’s just something about Debora’s writing that really tickled me, with the discomfort of Kate and her messiness, and her inappropriate awkwardness, and the relationship between the husband and the wife. I just thought it was completely fun to read, and it was fun to do."
6.Ultimately, Keri really related to Kate and that was one reason she ended up saying yes to the role.
In an interview with The AV Club, Russell said, "Playing someone like Kate is not such a stretch for me. Getting to be nervous and uncomfortable all the time? I said, 'Great, I know how to do that for sure.' That nervousness of Kate is much closer to who I am as a person than the panther-like stealth quality of Elizabeth Jennings [from The Americans]."
7.Cahn also had her eye on Rufus Sewell for the role of Kate's husband, Hal.
"I've been crazy about [him] for a long time, I saw him on Broadway in a Tom Stoppard play called Rock and Roll," she told Screen Rant. "I completely had an actor crush on him ever since then. And he was definitely the dream version of Hal."
8.Cahn first had the idea for The Diplomat while working on The West Wing.
"[I] was sitting in my office at the West Wing when I knew the series was ending, and I was like, 'Well, I want to do this — but international,'" she told Netflix's Tudum. "And I spent a lot of time thinking about what that might mean. And I was like, 'Well, maybe it's set in an embassy.' And I always knew that I wanted to do something about who we are in the world."
9.Attending "spy camp" for Homeland only bolstered the idea for Cahn.
"At the beginning of every season we would spend a week in Washington, D.C., and this unbelievable parade of experts would come through from the political world and foreign policy and journalists and generals and ambassadors," Cahn explained to Tudum.
"And when the first [ambassador] came in and sat down and talked to us, she just blew my mind. She looked so polite and unassuming, and if you had told me she was a librarian, I would've believed you. And then she starts talking about what her career has looked like and it's just breathtaking. The stories are breathtaking and very action-packed and very Carrie Mathison, and nobody knows about them. Those jobs, when done right, are completely invisible."
"And all we ever hear about it is like, 'Oh, ambassadors, they go and they drink champagne in fancy places,' and it's so much that's hidden. And not necessarily hidden, but has not before been very much of interest in the public. And I just felt like this woman is a superhero in a pantsuit. She's running around saving the world and dodging bullets and doing it all with a china teacup in her hand. And I just didn't see it coming. And I thought, 'Well, that's a possibility.'"
10.Russell and Sewell did their own stunts for their fight in Episode 3.
"We were genuinely exhausted, with her hanging on me," Sewell said in an interview with Screen Rant. "We're trying to pick up trees, me picking her up and her playing dead. All of this stuff. It was ridiculous and hilarious. But we had so much fun."
11.In fact, stunt doubles were on set the day they filmed Episode 3, but Russell and Sewell wanted it to "not look professional" so they elected to do the stunts themselves.
Sewell told Netflix's Tudum, "We didn’t want it to look like a fight. It should be stupid and messy. Flailing and ridiculous and so stupid."
12.Cahn drew inspiration from Hillary and Bill Clinton for Kate and Hal's relationship.
13.Kari Amelung, a former CIA agent of 33 years, consulted on the series.
She revealed to Vanity Fair that Kate and Hal's decision to stay together makes a lot of sense, explaining that married agents will do so because they don't want to have to return to the US to get divorced, or otherwise affect their careers.
14.She also finds the couple's use of humor to be realistic, despite how serious spies and politicians are often depicted.
"In real life, part of the way that we cope with this really serious job and the tension that comes with it is we laugh a lot," Amelung said in a Vanity Fair interview. "Some of the funniest people I know are my former colleagues because we cope through humor."
15.This is Rory Kinnear's second time playing Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The first was in the series premiere of Black Mirror.
16.In terms of the cliffhanger ending to Season 1, Cahn said she wanted to "make people want more" and she also wanted "to bring together all of the different dynamics of the political relationships and the personal relationships in one event that splits apart all at the same time." David Gyasi, who plays Austin Dennison, said he was shocked when he found out the ending.
"It was a shock. I didn’t see that coming," Gyasi explained to Netflix's Tudum. "One of the first things that Debora said to me is, 'You get almost caricatures of baddies and goodies. And it’s the ones that slip under the radar and seem fairly harmless or seem fairly stupid [like Trowbridge, that are the most dangerous].'"
17.The show was primarily filmed in London and the Cotswolds, though the scenes taking place in Winfield House — where the real-life US Ambassador to the UK actually lives — were shot elsewhere.
Some scenes were also filmed at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
18. The actual US Embassy in the UK released a fact-check video about The Diplomat, revealing what it got right — and wrong.
We fact checked the first episode of @netflix's The Diplomat and the amount they got right might surprise you. Got a question about how a real 🇺🇸 embassy works? Ask your questions in the comments below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Ol8CpdnNwO
— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) May 2, 2023
19.And finally, fans of the series will be happy to know that it was renewed for a second season less than two weeks after its debut.
