‘Netflix thriller fans are furious I haven’t won an award – but I’m relieved’

If you can suspend your disbelief at some of the bonkers turns in The Diplomat – which is now back for a third season, with a fourth already in the works – you’ll find that at the centre of the Netflix political thriller, Keri Russell is as brilliant as ever.

Russell plays said diplomat Kate Wyler, who’s wrangling with an incredibly flawed new US president (what must that be like?) much like a babysitter would a toddler. In this instance, the fearless leader of the free world is played by Allison Janney, who still seems at home in the Oval Office after her time in The West Wing.

The pacy six-parter has seen Russell already twice Emmy-nominated as the fictional US foreign ambassador, but both times pipped to the post. If you wind your way over to the show’s Reddit thread, fans have commiserated for the star – but she’s happy to stay not winning.

‘The sweet spot for me is getting nominated, but not actually having to go up and say anything,’ she laughs in a chat with Metro ahead of the show’s third release. 

‘It makes me so nervous. So if I could just miraculously get nominated and never actually have to go up and speak, that would be perfect.’

Just as much as The Diplomat revolves around political skullduggery, it is also a domestic drama. Bradley Whitford (also of The West Wing), who plays the POTUS’s First Gentleman, goes one step further and tells us it’s a ‘marital show’. 

‘It’s an exploration of problem solving and power dynamics in relationships and in the world,’ he says. ‘I think it’s in every frame of the show – this connection of intimate power structures and international power structures.’

Like politics, a marriage is never simple. This season sees Kate step outside hers in favour of a show newcomer who will be very familiar to one half of the British public: Aidan Turner.

‘He’s a dreamboat, as one might say,’ smiles Russell.

Turner is the actor of shirtless scything in Poldark and the brooding moustachio work of Rivals. While Russell had not watched either show before Turner joined the cast this season, she admitted she had ‘heard tell’.

For a show that is ostensibly about politics, viewers might be surprised by the runtime ratio of bedroom antics to boardrooms.

Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford, or POTUS and FGOTUS (needs work), have so much praise for one another that you would be left wondering why your own colleagues don’t gush about you like that. But they did have to get to grips with playing lovers, against the backdrop of what is a two-decade-plus friendship after meeting on The West Wing in the 90s. 

‘We were laughing about the bedroom scene we had to do, because we feel like siblings,’ laughs Janney. ‘We’ve spent more time with each other than our real siblings.

‘We were a little like, “This is going to be weird”, but it was actually really fun and so much easier doing with each other than if it had been another actor that I didn’t know.’

Janney and Whitford aren’t the only actors on The Diplomat with a hall-of-fame show in their back catalogues. Russell was thrice Emmy-nominated for her role as the cold-eyed Soviet spy Elizabeth Jennings in The Americans (somehow, still no wins).

Despite the fact that the lustre undoubtedly shines brighter on the latter, Russell says The Diplomat is one of her favourite jobs yet.

‘Maybe it’s my age, but I’m just having so much fun on this one,’ she said. ‘I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a few different television series, and mostly what I focus on is the writing. I think that it has never led me wrong. 

Praising the penmanship of creator Debora Cahn, she adds: ‘I thought the writing was super strong on The Americans and I think the same about this show. I think that’s what I look toward and I keep as my guiding force.’

The Diplomat season 3 is available to stream on Netflix.

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