When Nana Mensah realized what was going to happen at the end of The Diplomat’s Season 4 finale — streaming on Netflix now — she started screaming. “I don’t read the scripts before the table read,” says the actor, who plays White House Chief of Staff Billie Appiah. “As it was dawning on me what was happening, I was like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’”
Castmate Ato Essandoh found himself in a similar state of shock. “I was in the car on the way home texting [The Diplomat creator Debora Cahn] a screed,” he says.
In the last few moments of the finale, President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) not only threatens to attack any country that stands in the way of the United States’ risky new mission, but also pushes Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) to the point of resigning from her role as ambassador to the UK. In the gives-you-chills-in-a-good-way last few minutes of the season, Appiah and US Secretary of State Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval) swiftly follow in her footsteps — and so too does Kate’s husband, Vice President Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell).
That jaw-dropping scene was just one crisis among many for a president who, over the course of her short tenure, has managed to steal Russia’s deadliest weapon, thrust her inexperienced husband Todd (Bradley Whitford) into delicate foreign relations, and made an enemy out of the newly minted British Prime Minister Bethan Vaughn (Jodie Whittaker).
Keep reading to find out how the Penn administration got itself into this highly dangerous mess, declassify what, exactly, is going on with Grace Penn, and hear from the cast on all the delicious twists and turns — and that intense Italian dinner scene.
Let’s back up. Last season, Russia lost contact with one of its submarines. It was carrying a highly dangerous nuclear-powered weapon known as the Poseidon, and ended up several miles off the northeast coast of England.
Kate convinced Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) that the US and UK should work together to bury the weapon in cement. But instead, Grace and Hal secretly sent an American submarine to capture the Poseidon for themselves.
Midway through Season 4, a distraught Trowbridge steps down. The prime minister is being blackmailed by Kate over a video that shows him attacking his now-deceased advisor Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie) and he’s grieving the loss of his foreign secretary, Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), who died in a tragic accident. He’s replaced by Vaughn, a whip-smart politician who is as cool-headed as Trowbridge was volatile. (Read our full breakdown of that wild changing of the guard here.)
Vaughn — who knows that the Penn administration snatched the Poseidon — gets word from Russia that they’d like to retrieve the dead bodies from their lost submarine. She signs off on them entering her territory, which would allow the Russians to discover that their weapon has been stolen. This decision sets Grace into a full-blown spiral.
Yes, we’re heartbroken too. In Season 4, Episode 4, we learn that Austin Dennison has been killed in a tragic helicopter crash while in Amritsar, India, to meet with the foreign minister. The news reaches Kate and Hal during what is already a very tense meeting with Trowbridge.
Grace has been known to make some risky decisions but, following an assassination attempt in the first episode of Season 4, she becomes more and more bombastic, and her willingness to risk human life grows.
“When she gets shot, she has been made vulnerable in a way that I don’t think she’s ever been before, and it changes her in huge ways that I don’t think she’s even aware of,” says Janney. “She doesn’t like to be seen as weak, and she doesn’t like that the other members of Congress are saying, ‘Maybe you should just take a few days off or whatever.’ And Grace is like, ‘No, I will not be stopped by this. I’m not going to be afraid. I’m going to do my job, and I’m going to double down on whatever I think is right to do.’ ”
Cahn adds that while everyone is noticing these changes in Grace, nobody really knows what to attribute them to. “Is it the problem that she’s facing? Is it the circumstances that have changed around her? Is it something in her that has changed?” says the creator. “Everybody’s trying to pin down what’s going on. Is she different? Is she different, but that’s OK and that’s what it’s supposed to be because you’re supposed to be different when you’re president? It’s a little bit of a mystery story throughout the season.”
Then, when Grace learns that Vaughn is going to let Russians into UK waters, she completely snaps. “Ambassador,” the president says to Kate, “let the prime minister know she has two options: She can either tell the Russians to stay out of her yard, or I’ll send warships to do it for her.”
Kate, acutely aware of the ramifications of that kind of threat, tries to tamp down the message to the prime minister, taking a far subtler approach. When Grace learns that Kate didn’t deliver her forceful missive to Vaughn, the heat turns up as the two go head-to-head during a tense dinner on an Italian terrace.
“You got shot, and your behavior changed,” Kate tells her. In response, Grace declares, “Let’s talk about it. I mean it, I’ve been giving Todd shit all day for even hinting at it. We need to face the idea that maybe I’m ... off.”
In that scene, everyone is scared of Grace, Janney says, adding, “I was even scared of her.” Despite the fact that the president is privately beginning to question her own instincts, she pushes forward. “Grace starts to doubt herself but doesn’t want to show it,” Janney explains. “So to not show it, she doubles down and makes decisions that are scaring everybody else and making them doubt that she’s OK.”
Ultimately, Grace decides to send Todd to deliver her threatening message, thanking Kate for her service to her country in a way that sounds awfully like a dismissal. Todd has been shooed over to London so that he can assume the highly ambiguous role of “Special Envoy,” but in reality, it’s so his wife doesn’t have to deal with him probing into her mental health. As Whitford puts it, “[Throughout the series] either Todd doesn’t want to be there, or people don’t want him there. There’s a discomfort with him that you can play with, and play against, that is really a lot of fun.”
A complete novice, Todd flounders through the meeting with the new British foreign secretary, Robyn Palmer (Abigail Marlowe), and ultimately suggests that the US might cause physical harm to any British citizen who gets between the United States’ warships and Russia’s sub — a prospect which, were to to actually transpire, would be the end of NATO. (Really great diplomacy, Todd!) Kate, who has been forced to sit silently by, tries to stop Todd from destroying the alliance altogether by quickly standing up and declaring that she is experiencing “sharp womanly pains.”
“It’s like a Will Ferrell recipe of someone falling on their face who thinks that they’re brilliant,” says Whitford of the high-stakes but also highly comedic scene. “It’s very Anchorman — watching someone go in with great confidence and just fall in a hole. I live for that.”
Unclear. Throughout the season, deputy chief of mission Stuart Hayford (Essandoh) and CIA agent Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) take small but significant steps to bring their relationship to the next level. They slowly learn to communicate their feelings during regular heart-to-hearts and, after the president is nearly killed, Eidra casually suggests that they live together.
“I feel like at that moment there is a kind of nihilism, where she’s sort of like, ‘What does it matter? Let’s live together,’ ” says Ahn. “The world is ending, I might as well take this leap.”
Eidra even makes a grand romantic gesture to fully prove her commitment, playing Prince’s “Adore” for her beau while asking — in her signature deadpan cadence — if he might possibly, in the future, consider a conversation that could lead to marriage. “I think Ato and I are quite different from our characters in a lot of ways, but the admiration that we have, it’s all under there,” Ahn says. “So, in those scenes, I can just feel what I’m feeling, mask it, and it all comes through anyway.”
“Adore,” Essandoh adds, is one of his favorite songs. “I used to sing it as a 13-year-old boy to myself with a comb and a pretend guitar that was a broom. When I saw that written, I was like, ‘Has somebody been reading my mind?’ Debora Cahn is a sorceress. She gets into your mind, and she figures you out, and then she puts it on the script.”
As their romance settles into place, Stuart is thrown for a serious loop. He’s deeply concerned about the president’s decision to send warships into British territory, and writes a cable to the State Department’s official dissent channel to share his objection. When Grace gets wind of Stuart’s actions, she’s furious, and orders him to be recalled to Washington. “When I read the part where Stuart gets the can, I thought ‘Oh, that, first of all, is heartbreaking,’ ” says Essandoh. “Second of all, I did not see where it could go, not just for Stuart, but everybody else. What are they going to do? Join Grace and be cool being a terrorist?”
In the finale, Stuart prepares to leave London, and Eidra decides to stay put. “They are in service to a big mission, they all have the same goal, and this is the first time that a personal desire is really butting up against that,” Ahn explains. “I think at that moment, it’s like that old mantra: My job is my lover.”
In the final episode, world leaders gather for the G7 summit, an international forum to discuss global economics and policy. It brings Grace, Hal, Kate, Billie, and Vaughn under the same roof in sunny Tuscany, Italy.
As the session kicks off, Grace unexpectedly takes the floor. She explains that Vaughn intends to allow Russians into UK waters, an idea she strongly rebukes. “She’ll tell you the Americans are prepared to fire on any country that interferes with our mission,” the president says. “Let me be clear, friends, she is absolutely right. Nothing will stop us from keeping Russian warships and surveillance vessels and tactical weaponry out of the European seas.”
After hearing that threat delivered, Kate stands up, gives Hal a kiss, removes her lanyard, steps directly in front of Grace Penn, and delivers her resignation. As she walks out, Billie and Ganon follow suit. “I think what they do is shocking,” executive producer Janice Williams says. “You have to be in awe of people who are willing to take that kind of stand and really be their best self at a moment when you could choose to be quiet.”
Alex Graves, who directed the finale, shot that scene in one day with five cameras. “It was thrilling,” he shares. “Grace lays down the law in such a banal fashion and essentially says, ‘Hi, we’re at this group community summit where we’ve been working together since World War II and we don’t care anymore. We’re just going to do what we want to do. And what are you going to do about it?’ ”
Whittaker, a longtime fan of The Diplomat, says filming that scene was the most surreal part of her time on set. “There are so many extras, there’s so much choreography, and you walk into a building that you cannot believe you're even allowed to be in, in Florence, with all of these people,” she says. “It’s such a moment, and it was really tingly, everyone taking off the lanyards … You don’t know if Hal’s going to go, you don’t know what’s happening, but Kate starts the dominoes. It was really moving.”
Grace, meanwhile, is “extremely lonely and scared,” Janney says. “At that moment, she feels like she’s by herself. It was very emotional. Grace is so infuriated and just tries to brush it aside. This means nothing. Keep going. These are just sick people, and she’s going to spin it that way.”
For Kate, Stuart’s recall was a turning point. “I think that really shifts Kate,” Russell says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m going to kill Grace Penn, she’s taking down him of all the people?’ Take me down, sure, but don’t take him down.”
And then, of course, there’s the Penn administration’s escalating erratic behavior, and Grace threatening NATO. “Each of these moments made her uncomfortable, and she’s always found a way to choose to understand it,” Cahn explains. “Individually, each one of those things is understandable. But her question is, if you look at them all together, is it a bunch of understandable things or is it an absolutely outrageous pattern of behavior?”
Russell relished that final payoff for her character. “How much can you swallow yourself for this goal that, I guess, is the team goal?” she says. “Then you’re sitting there in this enormous moment at the G7, and you’re like, ‘I am too far from myself. I can’t do this. I can walk out.’ I love that. In the US, I think so many of us are like, ‘Where are the people who are going to do this? Is anyone standing up?’ And amazingly, no one is.”Mensah says that Billie makes the decision to leave after Grace hisses “sit down” at Hal and he obeys. The chief of staff thought Hal had the ability to temper Grace — that she could sleep well knowing the vice president was at the helm, for better or worse.
“The fact that he is cowed by her at that moment, in that room with those people, Billie realizes, ‘We’ve lost our one and only, our highest-ranking advocate and now Grace can run roughshod over whomever, wherever,’ ” Mensah explains, adding that Billie couldn’t “bear witness to this” anymore.
If Kate hadn’t made the decision to walk out very publicly, it’s unlikely Billie would have too. “Kate Wyler is a firework, and she does things in firework-y ways,” Mensah says. “Billie is a sniper. I don’t think she would have left out the front door, she would have left out the back.”
Adds Russell, “I love it — just walking out and then to see or hear that Billie comes out is just the best. It’s so good.”
Yes! For a moment, we think Kate, Billie, and Ganon might be the only ones to take a stand. Then, from the darkness, Hal steps out. Kate is flooded with relief. “[She was thinking], ‘Oh my God, I’m so glad he made the right choice,’ ” Russell says. “ ‘Whatever this is, whatever it is between us, I’m so glad he made the right choice.’ ”
Cahn had been working towards that “big move” since the very beginning. She knew she wanted Hal to leave the building, but needed to figure out how to build to his exit in a way that felt grounded and credible. “It was really hard to get the story there, but the fact that we always knew what we were driving towards was helpful,” she explains.
Hal’s appearance came as a surprise to the many people on set. “In the read-through, that last page was redacted,” Sewell says, adding that his character earned a round of applause that day.
Despite the grandeur of Hal’s exit, Sewell isn’t convinced the VP made his bold move for the noblest of reasons. “He tries to stand up [in the summit], and he gets sat down by the president. If there’s any nobility in what he does, it comes out of having been humiliated. It’s painful to play that because it’s not a good look.”
Without exchanging a word with her husband, Kate turns to the press and tells them that the vice president has something to say. Hal doesn’t miss a beat, steps up to the mic, and opens his mouth to speak. The screen fades to black before we get a chance to hear what his statement will be, but that wordless moment between Kate and Hal speaks volumes.
“No matter what they’ve been through, no matter where their relationship is now, they are in sync with what each other thinks,” Sewell says. “The story of this season is Kate knows he must have some inner master plan. There must be some end game. There must be some counter-narrative, and he won’t share it.”
The actor adds, “She has faith in him, but faith can be shaken.”
All four seasons of The Diplomat are streaming now.
