'The Diplomat' Creator Debora Cahn Talks Season 2

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains important plot details from Season 2 of Netflix The diplomat.

Tensions abroad escalate even further in Season 2 of The diplomat as Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) continues to investigate the bombing of a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

The breakneck six-episode season picks up right where the first season left off, plunging viewers into the panic that erupted after a car bomb exploded in the heart of London, killing MP Merritt Grove and Kate's husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). left behind. and her deputy chief of mission Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) seriously injured.

Kate and British Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) had begun to suspect that Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) was behind both attacks, the first to suppress Scotland's independence movement and the second to silence Grove. However, as they dig deeper, it turns out it's much more complicated than they could have ever imagined.

It turns out that Trowbridge's former adviser Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie) was behind the order for both bombings… at the direction of US Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Trowbridge didn't know and neither did the President of the United States. Talk about a plot twist!

To make matters worse, the season ends on a massive cliffhanger after Hal takes it upon himself to inform the President about VP Penn's discretion. The shock is so great that he is killed and Penn is left as the new commander in chief.

Luckily for audiences, the series has already been renewed for the third season.

Creator Debora Cahn summarized the season with Deadline in the following interview. She also discussed Season 2 in more detail in a previous question-and-answer session with Deadline, which also featured a conversation between the stars of the Netflix series and Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, which took place before the White Correspondents' Association dinner House took place in April.

DEADLINE: You picked up the second season right where the first season left off. Is that the plan for the future, for the rest of the series?

DEBORA CAHN: I like to stay open to the idea that we'll continue for a year or two at some point, who knows, but I always have a desire to jump into the story just 30 seconds after we leave it. I've never done this type of storytelling before, and I think part of it comes from a desire to make sure people are watching over a longer period of time. You watch two or three episodes in a row and we want to feel like it's still driving. It's like a long story. You are watching a long film. But once you get into the habit of it, it's just fun to write like that.

DEADLINE: This season's story feels incredibly prescient considering it was written some time ago. Not only is there a female vice president who has to compete more for an older president whose abilities are being questioned, but it also ends with this huge cliffhanger where she becomes president. How does it feel now to release this less than a week before the presidential election?

CAHN: It's a bit frightening because we didn't really want to get anything out of the headlines. The idea is always to find a way into the headspace of the country and the audience and what we are all thinking about at the moment, particularly the world of foreign policy. What ideas are we grappling with as a country that we can then engage with these characters? But we don't want it to really be the same story every minute. I guess we ran a little close to the wind – I think I'm mixing up my metaphors – and ended up getting a lot closer to the action. We had already filmed it in our world. That's about it: There's a moment where Kate appears in a light blue suit and Kamala Harris wore the identical suit at this big rally. It looks like we're stealing from the headlines, but…

DEADLINE: When we elect our first female president next week, how will you reflect on this season?

CAHN: In some ways it was really exciting. I write about wish fulfillment and it's nice that the wish actually comes true in real life. She's a great character and she's such a great actress that we want to create a situation for this character that's as rich and cheesy as possible. But yeah, it's intimidating to talk about something that's going on. We don’t want to push ourselves into a corner that makes us look outdated and sad.

DEADLINE: I think this season raises a lot of questions about how we assess the competence of our leaders, particularly women. Once we know Grace Penn taught Roylin, we think she's unsuitable, but then she explains herself and the situation becomes much more complicated. Is she right? Does it even matter whether we fully agree with her? How did you think about this when you wrote it?

CAHN: The idea from the beginning was to create a situation where something bad happens, and we know who did it, our enemy did it, and we blame that enemy, and then it becomes clear that he's actually not involved was. And then we know, “Oh, it's the other enemy.” And then we find out that that's not really true either. Then we found out it was our friend, and then we found out it was us. So ultimately I want to look at a situation that feels like a global conflict, a terrible crime and a tragedy, and see how something like that unfolds. For me, it's much more interesting and challenging to see how good people, who I think are really smart, can end up making a decision that has terrible, terrible consequences.

I think we often trip ourselves up when we look at something that's happened in the world and say, “That's because the bad people did it.” The bad people in our country or the evil people in another country. It's no coincidence that it's Allison. She is so lovable and admirable. So let's take a character like that and allow him to walk us through every step of this decision that we find unfortunate and that we call evil, and then get to the point: “Wow, this is really complicated and it's really hard.” “Do it right…” There was no good option on the table. The situation is bad, but the decision maker is not.

DEADLINE: So what does this mean for Kate's vice presidential ambitions? Are they dead in the water?

CAHN: Welcome to Season 3.

DEADLINE: I found it so interesting that Kate is confronted with the idea that her attraction to Hal is tied to his tendency to make spontaneous, often irresponsible decisions. How will this affect them?

CAHN: We are attracted to charismatic people. We are drawn to thinking outside the box. We are drawn to big, magical moments and grand gestures. Then the question arises: What are the consequences? The consequences are often catastrophic. So once you've experienced both sides of this rollercoaster ride, do you walk away and say, “I'm not looking for that anymore”? Or do what I think a lot of people do, and I've certainly done for a lot of my life, which is, “Well, now that's what I'm looking for – the climax, the highlights, amazing moments, without the downsides, and I'm sure it exists'? Unfortunately, according to my research, this is not the case. So Kate herself kind of struggles with it and gets to the point where she realizes that the magical side of Hal and the disaster side of Hal are all the same and that if you get one, you have to have the other. This is something she tries to learn, rationally but never emotionally.

DEADLINE: Is his complicity in the president's death and the rise of Grace Penn the final straw?

CAHN: These are spoilers for season 3! Can the union survive under these circumstances? I don't know.

DEADLINE: I also want to talk about Dennison. As the situation becomes more and more complicated, he is somewhat forced out of the sober morality that he operates by in Season 1. How will he cope with these new developments?

CAHN: I think Dennison still manages to live in a bipolar universe of right and wrong in a way that Kate wants Hal and herself to. The solutions he finds to problems are quite dramatic. He's willing to be loyal up to a point, and then when he's not loyal, he is Really not loyal. I think it's difficult for him to even do half-hearted things. I think he either has to take a stand and defend a position or abandon it and take a different stance and defend that position, which in many ways makes him admirable and in many ways makes him not as strong a player on this board as he is want.

DEADLINE: Is there a path forward for his and Kate's alliance? By the end of the season he really doesn't trust her anymore.

CAHN: The Kate-Dennison relationship plays many roles narratively…they are two diplomats. They come from different places. They deal with different issues that come to them from the government back home, but they are like-minded people. They see the world very similarly. They have similar goals. They like each other, they get along, they get things done. The idealism of the show is that being able to build relationships like that around the world at crucial moments can really help. It can really keep things from getting out of hand. So the hope is that the experiences they've had together don't destroy that.

It's a kind of fragile, wonderful and powerful thing. I think this is something that people who do this type of work often go through. We can share our thoughts with our friends, but at the end of the day, when we represent a country, the country will make a decision and we will implement it. How do you come back from this? How can you trust people after this has happened? I don't know. I don't know if it's possible to rebuild after something like this, but it's certainly the question that diplomats face all the time.