SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for The Diplomat Season 4, now streaming on Netflix.
There have been three British Prime Ministers and five Foreign Secretaries since The Diplomat premiered in April 2023.
However, in the universe of Netflix’s Keri Russell-led drama series, there has only been one of each. Until now, that is.
The Debora Cahn-created show launched its fourth season today (October 15) and with it came some surprising new arrangements in No. 10 Downing Street and No. 1 Carlton Gardens.
Austin Dennison, played by David Gyasi, tragically dies in the first few episodes of Season 4. The character was killed in a helicopter crash in Amritsar, Indian that also involved the Indian Prime Minister.
British Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge, played by Rory Kinnear, reveals the news to Hal Wyler, Vice President of the United States, played by Rufus Sewell, in a rather tense meeting in London.
“Did you send Austin somewhere horrid and then pray he wouldn’t make it back?,” the ghost of Margaret Roylin asks Trowbridge as he processes Dennison’s death.
Russell, who plays Kate Wyler, U.S. Ambassador to the UK, told Deadline that storyline is “powerful” and “devastating”. Her character has a romantic tension with Dennison, and despite plotting an affair, the pair only flirt and never act on it. “When you’re in service, but traveling, everything is really heightened… so the bonds you make when you’re away from home, away from the distractions of everyday life, the people that you meet, it’s extraordinarily deep and passionate, and I think that character for Kate is really pivotal,” she told Deadline. “So to lose him is monumental, but I also think realistic to these worlds.”
Creator Cahn added that his death was a “terrible thing”. “We reached a point where the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, in our show, had been in office for the length of time that the actual UK had had five changes of government… and we had the same people all the way through, and it felt disingenuous not to make our characters face the challenge of the second you create relationships, the second you have your feet on the ground in a country, the whole thing changes, and you’re starting from scratch again. The nature of this kind of work is what happens when you’re starting over. You’re starting over all the time,” she told Deadline.
Earlier in the season, Russell’s Wyler revealed to the new British Foreign Secretary that Trowbridge had tried to kill Roylin after it emerged that she was involved in the attack on the HMS Courageous that saw 41 sailors die.
This seems to have led, directly or indirectly, to Trowbridge stepping down as PM. “One hour ago, I spoke with His Majesty the King. He has accepted my resignation as Prime Minister,” he says in episode four.
After a rather lengthy political battle, Bethan Vaughan triumphs over an antisemitic and xenophobic candidate to become only the second PM during the run of The Diplomat.
Cahn was also able to keep this casting a secret: Jodie Whittaker, best known as the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who and as the star of Broadchurch, plays PM Vaughan.
“She sounds like a real crackerjack,” one character says, before it emerges that Vaughan was previously an “acid house devotee”.
Russell called Whittaker “so great”. “When that character was written, I was so curious who they were going to choose because they were all over the shop. Debora said to me, which I really appreciated, she said, ‘I wanted it to be someone who’s a peer to Kate’ so that in those scenes it wasn’t someone above her. We already have that with Allison Janney’s Grace Penn character, but she wanted it to be someone of my era and my peer, who is in a real position of power and is doing it sort of well and she is able to present herself in a way that Kate can’t quite muster yet. Jodie did it so well so well, she’s wonderful,” she added.