When it comes to accepting a job, Keri Russell admits she’s not easily persuaded. There’s the quality of the script to consider, of course, but she’d also prefer to remain close to the comfort of the Brooklyn home she shares with her partner, actor Matthew Rhys, and her three children. Content to curl up with a book, hang out with her family, and hop on her bike to run errands, “I don’t say yes to a lot of things,” admits the no-nonsense actor on the podcast Skip Intro with Krista Smith. “I tend to hide out in my house a lot.”

But even for Russell, there are exceptions, which worked to the benefit of creator, writer, and producer Debora Cahn, whose résumé includes Homeland and The West Wing. When Cahn reached out to Russell about The Diplomat, an edge-of-your-seat tale about a savvy career foreign service officer who is headed to Afghanistan but gets rerouted instead to become the US ambassador to the UK, Russell was in the middle of the Christmas holidays. “I was cooking lunch for three sets of grandparents, with all the kids, and everyone was in town. I was probably drunk by noon every day just to manage the cooking, the cleaning, the stress,” the actor said with a laugh. Cahn interrupted the holiday festivities to pitch the project via Zoom, and “I was like, ‘It has to be in New York!’” Russell remembers. “She said, ‘It shoots in London.’ I was like, ‘I’ll go to London!’”

Keri Russell as Kate Wyler

Photo by Liam Daniel

Russell’s adventure across the pond has her starring as Kate Wyler, an experienced diplomat with a passion for the intricacies of Middle East politics. When the president posts her to London — with the secret agenda of vetting her as a possible vice president — she grudgingly takes on the glad-handing duty. Despite the political tension and international intrigue, the series also allows the actor to show off her comedic side, especially in scenes with Rufus Sewell, who plays her character’s enraging but utterly charming husband and fellow ambassador named Hal.

The third season, which received seven Emmy nominations, throws Kate and Hal’s relationship into new, increasingly complicated territory. As Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) becomes President Grace Penn after the death of the sitting POTUS, Kate is poised to become the second-in-command, until Penn selects Hal for the seat. “The constant power play in relationships is so fun — and true in government, especially in the foreign service,” says Russell. “People are constantly shifting jobs, and relationships are moving, and a new president is in, and where do I stand? So all of it is delicious and so fun. This season felt incredibly personal and more intimate at times, and it’s a complete treat to get to do this job.”

Russell as Kate Wyler and Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler

Photo by Liam Daniel

The role of Kate Wyler has brought Russell Emmy nominations for all three seasons. The latest comes on the heels of a Screen Actors Guild win at the 2026 Actor Awards. “I have to say this show is so wonderful because of Debora Cahn,” Russell said in her acceptance speech, to a crowd of her peers. “Any one of you would be so lucky to be on this show [because] her writing is so good.” Cahn’s show is ultimately an exploration of enduring partnerships. Kate and Hal’s marital drama is just one of the sizzling dynamics at the core of The Diplomat. “Debora always says that long-term relationships can be transcendent, but also torture. That’s what the show is about — these long-term relationships between countries and people,” says Russell. “If you can stick it out, it can be this incredible thing. But it’s hard work, and things go badly.”

Back in 1999, Russell earned a Golden Globe for her pitch-perfect portrayal of young angst, playing an innocent college student torn between two relationships in the series Felicity. Part of the series’ charm, beyond Russell’s charismatic performance, was the natural, lived-in quality of the characters and the world, down to the protagonist’s imperfections. The Diplomat’s Kate may be experiencing the growing pains of a different stage of life, and on a more heightened scale, yet there are similarities to be drawn in the characters. “It’s so great when you don’t have to be the pretty one, when your clothes don’t have to fit perfectly,” Russell told Skip Intro. “Other people get to be the pretty people, and that’s awesome. I felt the same way during Felicity. I’d rather just be the ‘gross one’ — there’s freedom in that.”

Russell as Felicity Porter in Felicity

Photo courtesy Everett Collection

Russell as Elizabeth Jennings in The Americans

Photo by Patrick Harbron / ©FX / courtesy Everett Collection

After the success of Felicity, which ran for four seasons, she sparkled with steely intensity opposite Rhys in The Americans, garnering Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for her role as an undercover Russian spy living in the suburbs of New Jersey during the Cold War. The critically acclaimed, Peabody-winning series explored a marriage against the backdrop of international political drama. In her roles as Elizabeth in The Americans and as Kate in The Diplomat, Russell was given complicated women to unpack. “I read so many scripts where every time there’s a woman, she’s a brain surgeon, and a professional trumpet player, and she’s a great mom, and she is funny and sassy, and you’re like, ‘Shut up.’ You don’t have to be all those things! I want people to be less strong all the time,” says Russell. “One of Kate’s weaknesses is that she is in a really complicated relationship, and she can’t seem to get herself out of it. That’s on her, and it’s OK watching someone work it out.”

Ultimately, it is not the ornate settings or the high-status jobs but the deeply human parts of Kate Wyler and the characters in her orbit that draw Russell into the work. “What I love so much about what Debora writes is that she’s created this world steeped in the minutiae of what it’s like to be a human,” she says, “just a person surviving in this job, in this world.”

Photo by Kelia Anne