The Diplomat Season 3: Keri Russell Explains Kate Hal Split, VP

The Diplomat Season 3: Keri Russell Explains Kate Hal Split, VP

The following story contains spoilers from the first two episodes of The Diplomat season three.

By the second episode of season three of Netflix’s The Diplomat, viewers may have thought that the political thriller was on the verge of blowing up its entire premise.

After a series of changes, including Allison Janney’s Grace Penn becoming president after President Rayburn dies, and Penn appointing Rufus Sewell’s former ambassador Hal Wyler as her vice president instead of his wife Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), Kate is ready to leave her post as American ambassador to the U.K. and return to the U.S. with Hal. However, as she’s about to board the plane, she looks up at Hal from the tarmac and can’t do it.

For Russell, the moment, which maintains her character’s current diplomatic position, is also an unusual shift for both Kate and many women. “The interesting part is that she’s just gonna go along miserably and do what the good girl is supposed to do. And when Stuart brings it up, like maybe you could just stay, I think she hadn’t even thought of it, and I love that she chooses to stay. It’s a monumental moment to choose yourself. And I think women, in particular, don’t. I think it’s really hard for women to choose themselves,” Russell tells The Hollywood Reporte

Kate’s 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.

Even though there is still “more work to be done” in the U.K., particularly as CIA station chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) is certain she’s about to be fired, Russell says her character’s decision is more about making a break from her pattern with Hal. “There’s been enough of following this guy and his career. Let him go do his career, let him have it, live it up,” Russell says.

The episode in which Kate and Hal part ways also features flashbacks to their early days as a couple, including Hal’s proposal, in what Russell called “contemplative in a way that is a different rhythm for our show.

And she praised Kate being passed over for Hal as VP as great storytelling. “When I read that, it was so fucking good. To be stripped of that when you’re building and all the work in the first episode of handling things for the president, and then for Hal to waltz in with his good looks and his good suit, and be offered the position is just deliciously heartbreaking,” she says.

At the beginning of episode two, viewers see Kate methodically remove the multiple bobby pins holding together her vice presidential hair, signaling an end to Kate’s ambitions to be VP. “You get into this whipped up environment, and you do sort of think, ‘Well, maybe this is what I want, maybe this is what I’m supposed to be doing,’” she says. “And 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.”

All three seasons of The Diplomat, including the eight-episode third season, are now streaming on Netflix.