{"id":132040,"date":"2025-10-19T13:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T13:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/132040\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T13:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T13:15:10","slug":"keri-russell-explains-kate-hal-split-vp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/132040\/","title":{"rendered":"Keri Russell Explains Kate Hal Split, VP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[The following story contains spoilers from the first two episodes of The Diplomat<\/a> season three.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBy the second episode of season three of Netflix<\/a>\u2018s The Diplomat, viewers may have thought that the political thriller was on the verge of blowing up its entire premise.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a series of changes<\/a>, including Allison Janney\u2019s Grace Penn becoming president after President Rayburn (Michael McKean) dies<\/a>, Celia Imrie\u2019s Margaret Roylin dying and Penn appointing Rufus Sewell<\/a>\u2018s former ambassador Hal Wyler as her vice president instead of his wife Kate Wyler (Keri Russell<\/a>), who\u2019d been pursuing the position<\/a>, Kate is ready to leave her post as American ambassador to the U.K., the role she took in the opening minutes of the series\u2019 first episode, and return to the U.S. with Hal with the promise of a newly created special envoy to Europe position alongside her role as second lady. But as she\u2019s about to board the plane, she looks up at Hal from the tarmac and can\u2019t do it. He looks back at her in a knowing moment for the long-married couple and turns around and boards the plane.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Russell, the moment, which maintains her character\u2019s current diplomatic position, is also an unusual shift for both Kate and many women.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe interesting part is that she\u2019s just gonna go along miserably and do what the good girl is supposed to do. And when Stuart (Ato Essandoh) brings it up, like maybe you could just stay, I think she hadn\u2019t even thought of it, and I love that she chooses to stay. It\u2019s a monumental moment to choose yourself. And I think women, in particular, don\u2019t. I think it\u2019s really hard for women to choose themselves,\u201d Russell tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cWomen don\u2019t do that that much for a million reasons, but at this point, Kate decides to choose herself, which is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKate\u2019s choice also reminded the actress of another acclaimed series she starred in that tackled the intimate relationship of a marriage amid larger geopolitical stakes: The Americans.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we were making The Americans<\/a>, Joe [Weisberg] and Joel [Fields]<\/a>, who wrote that show, said they followed a feminist guidebook, or these guidelines, so every single decision Elizabeth made followed this set of rules,\u201d Russell explained of her Soviet spy character in the FX series. \u201cYou did it for yourself, not for your family, not for your kids. You made the decision for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven though there is still \u201cmore work to be done\u201d in the U.K., particularly as CIA station chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) and Kate\u2019s friend is certain she\u2019s about to be fired, Russell says her character\u2019s decision is more about making a break from her pattern with Hal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s been enough of following this guy and his career. Let him go do his career, let him have it, live it up,\u201d Russell says. \u201cThe rivalry and the messiness of it and all the complications of that relationship, it was just too much. You just have to clear your head. And I think she wanted to clear the slate and focus on what her priorities were.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe episode in which Kate and Hal part ways also features flashbacks to their early days as a couple, including Hal\u2019s proposal, in what Russell called \u201ccontemplative in a way that is a different rhythm for our show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe adds, \u201cThat whole idea of, \u2018How did I end up here?, What steps led me here?\u2019 It\u2019s interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd she praised Kate being passed over for Hal as VP as great storytelling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I read that, it was so fucking good. To be stripped of that when you\u2019re building and all the work in the first episode of handling things for the president, even though they\u2019re at odds, doing the right thing, making everything work and then for Hal to waltz in with his good looks and his good suit, and be offered the position is just deliciously heartbreaking. It really sets this season off to a completely different place,\u201d she says. \u201cAny character, for me anyway, is better when you\u2019re losing. And [creator and showrunner] Debora [Cahn] writes some pretty fantastic, humiliating losses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking at a post-screening Q&A with former American ambassador to the U.K. Jane Hartley in New York earlier this week, Cahn joked about the real-life parallels of someone as qualified as Kate not getting a top job.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow did we come up with the idea that a really smart woman with a lot of experience and a real granular understanding of how things work would be sort of ready, willing and able to take a big leadership job and then didn\u2019t get it at the last second?,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in all seriousness, she said that they wanted to keep Kate in the foreign service.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd, she said, \u201cThe idea of having two women in the White House, sadly, felt like science fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the beginning of episode two, viewers see Kate methodically remove the multiple bobby pins holding together her vice presidential hair and sweep them away, signaling an end \u2014\u00a0at least for now \u2014\u00a0to Kate\u2019s ambitions to be vp.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that\u2019s where Russell points out that Kate \u201cdidn\u2019t want that job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou get into this whipped up environment, and you do sort of think, \u2018Well, maybe this is what I want, maybe this is what I\u2019m supposed to be doing,’\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then when [Hal becomes vp], I think it just strips everything away and makes her rethink the whole thing and what she believes and what she wants. I think that\u2019s a great place to start the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSewell was also excited by the shifting dynamics that came with Hal being picked for vp, saying he was \u201caghast\u201d when he found out about the \u201cfantastic\u201d development.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat it does to the dynamic is so explosive, so unexpected, it throws so much in the air. We\u2019ve always enjoyed those kinds of things,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be the dog that caught the car, so the change in dynamic, I was very grateful for, because I think there\u2019s only a limited amount of interest that you can get out of the dynamic staying the same for too long. So something that really rebalanced the status and created new problems opened the story up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe multiple shifts in season three, Cahn indicates, were just natural consequences of the \u201ctiny\u201d change of Rayburn\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe just did this one tiny little thing, which was the president dropped dead, and it created a whole lot of fallout,\u201d she quips.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, she was intrigued by the possibilities of what these changes would do for the characters.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was really fascinating to watch a bunch of characters who believe that the world can turn over, but they will stay essentially the same. They will be the same people in relationship to each other,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd for those who think that some threads from the first two seasons have been tied up early in season three, Cahn teases that those ties may unravel yet again.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI always think that we\u2019re going to resolve storylines and embark on a new path, but then we end up with some new wrinkle from the old path, which I guess is a lot like life,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll three seasons, including the eight-episode third season, of The Diplomat are now streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[The following story contains spoilers from the first two episodes of The Diplomat season three.] By the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,19,17,77879,127,79197,79198,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-132040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-keri-russell","13":"tag-netflix","14":"tag-rufus-sewell","15":"tag-the-diplomat","16":"tag-tv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}