{"id":631237,"date":"2026-10-15T09:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T09:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/631237\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T09:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T09:20:23","slug":"the-diplomat-season-4-who-dies-who-is-new-prime-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/631237\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Diplomat’ Season 4: Who Dies & Who Is New Prime Minister?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for The Diplomat<\/a> Season 4, now streaming on Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere have been three British Prime Ministers and five Foreign Secretaries since The Diplomat premiered in April 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, in the universe of Netflix\u2019s Keri Russell<\/a>-led drama series, there has only been one of each. Until now, that is.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Debora Cahn<\/a>-created show launched its fourth season today (October 15) and with it came some surprising new arrangements in No. 10 Downing Street and No. 1 Carlton Gardens.<\/p>\n

\n\tAustin Dennison, played by David Gyasi, tragically dies in the first few episodes of Season 4. The character was killed in a helicopter crash in Amritsar, Indian that also involved the Indian Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

\n\tBritish Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge, played by Rory Kinnear, reveals the news to Hal Wyler, Vice President of the United States, played by Rufus Sewell, in a rather tense meeting in London.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Gyasi as Austin Dennison in The Diplomat (Liam Daniel\/Netflix)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDid you send Austin somewhere horrid and then pray he wouldn\u2019t make it back?,\u201d the ghost of Margaret Roylin asks Trowbridge as he processes Dennison\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\n\tRussell, who plays Kate Wyler, U.S. Ambassador to the UK, told Deadline that storyline is \u201cpowerful\u201d and \u201cdevastating\u201d. Her character has a romantic tension with Dennison, and despite plotting an affair, the pair only flirt and never act on it. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in service, but traveling, everything is really heightened\u2026 so the bonds you make when you\u2019re away from home, away from the distractions of everyday life, the people that you meet, it\u2019s extraordinarily deep and passionate, and I think that character for Kate is really pivotal,\u201d she told Deadline. \u201cSo to lose him is monumental, but I also think realistic to these worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCreator Cahn added that his death was a \u201cterrible thing\u201d. \u201cWe reached a point where the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, in our show, had been in office for the length of time that the actual UK had had five changes of government\u2026 and we had the same people all the way through, and it felt disingenuous not to make our characters face the challenge of the second you create relationships, the second you have your feet on the ground in a country, the whole thing changes, and you\u2019re starting from scratch again. The nature of this kind of work is what happens when you\u2019re starting over. You\u2019re starting over all the time,\u201d she told Deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier in the season, Russell\u2019s Wyler revealed to the new British Foreign Secretary that Trowbridge had tried to kill Roylin after it emerged that she was involved in the attack on the HMS Courageous that saw 41 sailors die.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis seems to have led, directly or indirectly, to Trowbridge stepping down as PM. \u201cOne hour ago, I spoke with His Majesty the King. He has accepted my resignation as Prime Minister,\u201d he says in episode four.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a rather lengthy political battle, Bethan Vaughan triumphs over an antisemitic and xenophobic candidate to become only the second PM during the run of The Diplomat.<\/p>\n

\n\tCahn was also able to keep this casting a secret: Jodie Whittaker, best known as the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who and as the star of Broadchurch, plays PM Vaughan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe sounds like a real crackerjack,\u201d one character says, before it emerges that Vaughan was previously an \u201cacid house devotee\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\tRussell called Whittaker \u201cso great\u201d. \u201cWhen that character was written, I was so curious who they were going to choose because they were all over the shop. Debora said to me, which I really appreciated, she said, \u2018I wanted it to be someone who\u2019s a peer to Kate\u2019 so that in those scenes it wasn\u2019t someone above her. We already have that with Allison Janney\u2019s Grace Penn character, but she wanted it to be someone of my era and my peer, who is in a real position of power and is doing it sort of well and she is able to present herself in a way that Kate can\u2019t quite muster yet. Jodie did it so well so well, she\u2019s wonderful,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for The Diplomat Season 4, now streaming on Netflix. There have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[309397,156,65106,1094,111,139,69,63274,437],"class_list":["post-631237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-debora-cahn","tag-entertainment","tag-keri-russell","tag-netflix","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-the-diplomat","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}