{"id":507612,"date":"2026-06-19T08:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T08:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/507612\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T08:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T08:29:21","slug":"keri-russell-teases-the-diplomat-season-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/507612\/","title":{"rendered":"Keri Russell Teases \u2018The Diplomat\u2019 Season 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s almost 1 a.m. in Florence, Italy, where Keri Russell is nearing the end of filming for season four of The Diplomat<\/a>, Netflix\u2019s savvy political drama created by TV vet Debora Cahn. It\u2019s been a hectic few days of night shoots across the Atlantic, but as she hops on our call, an ebullient Russell is eager to gab. \u201cI just got home, I\u2019ve wolfed down two bites of pasta and I\u2019m sipping a glass of wine,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m ready for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Diplomat asks a lot of Russell, from intricate emotional shifts to the dense jargon of top-secret international relations, but just as she does on camera, she carries it all with a disarming ease after a long day\u2019s work. Russell has settled into the role of Kate Wyler, a diplomat who\u2019s been thrust to the center of a high-stakes global crisis while navigating her turbulent marriage to fellow insider Hal (Rufus Sewell) and her even more complex relationship to her own ambitions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is something that you can\u2019t manufacture when you have years of experience with people,\u201d Russell says. \u201cIt\u2019s like slipping on a comfortable pair of shoes. That\u2019s the benefit of good series work.\u201d Russell is familiar with this trajectory, which is the goal whenever embarking on a new continuing TV show. Her breakout on college drama Felicity won her a Golden Globe and lasted four seasons; before jumping into The Diplomat, she\u2019d finished a critically lauded six-season run on FX\u2019s Emmy-winning spy drama The Americans, where she also met her romantic partner, co-star Matthew Rhys.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike The Americans, The Diplomat stages hefty geopolitical drama within the context of a fraught marriage. \u201cThat\u2019s the most monumental relationship in your life, where you grow, you fail, you fuck up \u2014 for all of those exciting moments in life, those are the highs and lows,\u201d Russell says. \u201cI love a longform show that can explore that because you get to grow with that couple.\u201d In The Diplomat, Kate weathers the wily Hal\u2019s repeated betrayals while grappling with his improbable rise \u2014 at the beginning of season three, he leapfrogs her to assume the job of vice president, to Allison Janney\u2019s hard-wired POTUS Grace Penn. By season\u2019s end, they are separated \u2014 and the biggest secret that Hal has ever kept from her is suddenly out in the open.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe chemistry between Russell and Sewell has been electric from moment one. \u201cHe and I can ride the same wavelength. We don\u2019t have to take care of each other a lot, which is a real gift,\u201d Russell says. \u201cWe both came into this at an age where we were already grown-ups, so we already had a firm base in what we liked or what we didn\u2019t like and who we were.\u201d That kind of flow is made possible by experience. The Americans, particularly, pushed her. She emerged from that show a different kind of actor, in no small part thanks to Rhys.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was a lot of sexuality in that show, and to do all of that with someone who is as skilled as Matthew and to never feel a hint of oppressive masculinity \u2014 he had such a safe way to enter that,\u201d Russell says.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet while the steely intensity of The Americans\u2018 Elizabeth Jennings marked a juicy departure for Russell, The Diplomat provides audiences the sheer pleasure of seeing how fully the star comes through and makes the part her own.<\/p>\n

\n\tKate is often the smartest person in the room, her greatest strengths being her ability to listen, observe and react. \u201cThere\u2019s a part of this character that has to hold everyone else\u2019s stories at the same time,\u201d Russell says. \u201cI\u2019m a middle child, and that was my job in my family, or maybe that\u2019s my job in this life \u2014 I\u2019m a good watcher. Kate has to be the watcher, not necessarily the performer in that moment \u2014 she\u2019s the beta to someone\u2019s alpha.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer competence is matched by the many other government workers in her orbit. \u201cI don\u2019t know how true this is, but I once heard that after Felicity aired, NYU enrollment went up \u2014 and what I hope is that maybe after this show, we\u2019ll have an uptick in Foreign Service applications,\u201d Russell says. \u201cHopefully people will go, even if it\u2019s fucking fake, \u2018Maybe I\u2019ll get a good post. Maybe I\u2019ll get to go to Paris or Italy, or have this hot romance with somebody I\u2019ve never even met from another country.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI know our world feels scary and disrupted and uneven,\u201d Russell continues. \u201cBut meeting these people who are so good and capable, I have to believe that there are more of those people out there, and they\u2019re all waiting to continue doing the good work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeginning with the pilot, there\u2019s also been an appealing restlessness to Kate, a loose physicality and prideful disregard for glamour. \u201cThere\u2019s a freedom there that, when playing women, is not always the case. You often have to be very beautiful or very elegant or very appropriate,\u201d says Russell.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been a decade since her first Emmy nomination for The Americans; she now has five in total. Earlier this year, for The Diplomat\u2018s third season, Russell won the most significant industry prize of her career, SAG-AFTRA\u2019s Actor Award for best actress in a drama series \u2014 meaning she\u2019s well-positioned to take home her first Emmy.<\/p>\n

\n\tRest assured, Russell has never been in the business for that \u2014 she told The New Yorker last year she hoped to lose at the Emmys, as she ultimately did to Severance\u2018s Britt Lower, so she could relax for the rest of the night \u2014 but she communicates deep pride in The Diplomat nonetheless. She\u2019s committed to praising Cahn in virtually every answer over our chat.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI rely on her when we\u2019re filming \u2014 unlike a lot of writers, she\u2019s there every single day. She is watching and shaping and nudging and pulling and whispering,\u201d Russell says. \u201cYou could read something and think, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s slapstick-funny.\u2019 And Deb goes, \u2018No \u2014 this is dead serious.\u2019 Or: \u2018I know that we\u2019re talking about this diplomatic thing, but the truth is all you care about is that you\u2019re starving.\u2019 That\u2019s her genius, the specificity or the misdirection of a scene \u2014 that\u2019s where she really shines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the way Russell plays every one of those scenes, though \u2014 she\u2019s bringing something surprising, nuanced and deeply human to it, too.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s almost 1 a.m. in Florence, Italy, where Keri Russell is nearing the end of filming for season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6971,12432,204898,93,61,60,134457,282],"class_list":["post-507612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-awards","tag-emmy-awards","tag-emmys-2026","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-the-diplomat","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}