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[Editor’s note: This post contains spoilers for “The Diplomat” Season 2, including the ending.]
Let’s be honest: As soon as viewers learned that Allison Janney (Allison Janney!) was going to be never-before-seen Vice President of the United States Grace Penn on Netflix’s “The Diplomat,” you just knew she was going to be heavily involved in whatever final episode twists went down.
And she was. After an Episode 5 bombshell that Penn herself ordered the attack on a British ship that killed service members, Kate (Keri Russell) is ready to throw her to the wolves — or, at least, the Secretary of State. But in classic “Diplomat” fashion, there is still one more reveal to go. Cue Janney in a ball gown hauling a map into a formal dining room and explaining in barnburner of a monologue the complex decisions she’s making every moment to keep Americans alive from nuclear attack.
“She comes in, we think she’s terrible,” creator Debora Cahn explains to IndieWire about envisioning the character. “We think she’s going to hate Kate and Kate’s going to hate her. Then there’s like immediately a bromance of sorts. Kate’s like, ‘Oh my god, she’s the leader that we actually all want and who I want to be when I grow up.’ Then Kate finds out what she’s done, and then hates her again, and then finds out why she did it, and then [realizes], ‘I would have done exactly the same thing,’ and to Hal, ‘You would have too.’ [We’re] trying to bring the audience into the thinking of characters who are facing something that’s complicated enough that, yeah, it’s a horror show. It turned into a massive blood bath. But the alternative was a bigger bloodbath. It wasn’t no bloodbath.”
Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell in ‘The Diplomat’Courtesy of NetflixThe days on set when Russell and Janney went toe to toe naturally ruled.
“I think [Janney] was excited about it, and we were all a little bit scared of it,” Cahn said of Penn’s big map scene. “I was so scared that I made one of the other writers write that scene, Juliana Marr, who’s one of our youngest writers on the staff, wrote it and fucking killed it, and we were all nervous. And then first rehearsal came and we walked through it a couple times … then the whole crew comes in so that the crew can see what the blocking is going to be, what they need to do, where, and they read through the scene for the crew, literally applause from the entire crew, and [I’d] never seen that happen before.”
Cahn confirmed the role got bigger once Janney signed on — and it seems she’ll return, as the final seconds of the season find her ascending to the Presidency after Kate’s shifty husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) instead of calling the Secretary of State like they agreed goes rogue (!), calls the President (!!), and subsequently kills him from the shock (!!!).
As for what’s next? While Netflix recently confirmed they have already ordered a Season 3, when IndieWire chatted with Cahn that hadn’t been announced yet.
“When we find out if we’re doing a Season 3, I will come up with a really great thing that will happen,” Cahn said with a laugh. “I have ideas. I like to take them to a writer’s room and say, ‘Please give me a better idea than this.’ I don’t walk in with nothing, but I very much want it to be a live, organic process where we figure [it] out. I don’t want to go grow too attached to any idea. I don’t think my idea is always the best. And I have like, six smart people who tell me their ideas.”
Let the brainstorming begin.
“The Diplomat” Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix.
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