{"id":634034,"date":"2026-10-18T04:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T04:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/634034\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T04:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T04:34:09","slug":"the-diplomat-trowbridge-resigns-rory-kinnear-interview-on-season-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/634034\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Diplomat’ Trowbridge Resigns Rory Kinnear Interview on Season 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[The following story contains spoilers from the first four episodes of The Diplomat<\/a> season four, through \u201cPagliacci.\u201d]<\/p>\n

\n\tRory Kinnear<\/a> couldn\u2019t leave The Diplomat<\/a> without one more surprise.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor, who has spent the past four seasons playing wild-card British prime minister Nicol Trowbridge, resigns midway through the Netflix<\/a> political thriller\u2019s latest season, announcing the move in a shocking moment at the end of episode four. Trowbridge steps down after an unusually surreal episode for The Diplomat, in which he imagines that former adviser Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), who dies early in season three, is still alive and chiming in on his latest actions. He also hallucinates that the U.S. officials with whom he\u2019s meeting are laughing at and mocking him and sings an aria as he thinks of himself as both a king and a clown (donning both costumes).<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the trippy scenes leading up to Kinnear\u2019s final scene, which comes just one episode after viewers learn that U.K. foreign secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) has died in a helicopter crash, Diplomat showrunner Debora Cahn says there were grounded, real-life reasons for this season\u2019s shake-up in the British government.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBy the time we got to this season, Rory had been prime minister for a period of time where the actual U.K. had like five different people at 10 Downing Street,\u201d Cahn tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cAnd it felt like there was this essential part of being a diplomat, which is that you\u2019re always learning the cast of characters from scratch. You either outlast the people that you\u2019re working with, or you\u2019re sent to a different country. And I wanted to see our team going through the struggle of just when you think you know where the ground is under your feet, it completely changes. You\u2019ve built all these relationships, and suddenly you have nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCahn was also interested in showing what it would mean for Keri Russell<\/a>\u2018s American ambassador to the U.K. to no longer have to work with someone like Trowbridge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI also really wanted to play with the dynamic of like, you think you\u2019re working with somebody who\u2019s difficult and they\u2019re the problem, and then they leave, and it turns out you were the problem or both of you were the problem,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tCahn gave Kinnear a heads-up that his character would be resigning at some point in season four, but the specifics around his departure didn\u2019t emerge until the actor received an unusual request while he was boarding a flight to Lithuania.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI got a message from Deb saying, \u2018Do you think you\u2019d be able to sing this?\u2019 And she sent me the aria,\u201d Kinnear recalls. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Why on earth would I be required to do that?\u2019 And I said, \u2018I think I could, but how did you know I could sing?\u2019 And she said, \u201cDo you remember it? I think it was at the beginning of season two, there was a funeral in St Paul\u2019s Cathedral, and the whole congregation was asked to sing a hymn and I could hear your voice.\u2019 I thought, \u2018Interesting.\u2019 And she\u2019d obviously held on to that for two and a half seasons and brought it back. So I thought, \u2018OK, how does that fit into why he might be resigning?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrowbridge\u2019s resignation is immediately preceded by Russell\u2019s Kate blackmailing him<\/a> by telling the newly appointed British foreign secretary Robyn Palmer (Abigail Marlowe), as Trowbridge looks on, about Roylin\u2019s involvement in the carrier ship attack that kicked off the series and how Trowbridge \u201ctried to kill\u201d Roylin when he learned what she\u2019d done.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe risky move is, unsurprisingly, Hal\u2019s (Rufus Sewell) idea<\/a> and though Kate initially resists his \u201cmafioso\u201d-like approach to foreign policy, she ends up doing what he suggested.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just think [Trowbridge] makes her crazy. I think he pushed her buttons,\u201d Russell says of why Kate threatens him after he said, in part, that she and Hal won\u2019t be invited to Dennison\u2019s funeral. \u201cHe knew how to get her riled up and make it personal, and it\u2019s too fresh. She\u2019s doing something she doesn\u2019t want to do anyway. She doesn\u2019t believe in it, and then he\u2019s attacking her when she hasn\u2019t processed something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe shake-up also meant Gyasi and Kinnear would be leaving the Netflix series on which they\u2019d been central castmembers for the past few years, a disappointing development for Cahn and the show\u2019s remaining cast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe wanted to keep Dave Gyasi and Rory Kinnear forever,\u201d Cahn says. \u201cI wish I could see them every day. It\u2019s a bummer when the company shifts in some way. We\u2019ve had the luxury of bringing a lot of people in, and sometimes the story is ejecting people out on the other end, and it sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSewell adds that Dennison\u2019s death and Trowbridge resigning are \u201ctremendously shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Kate, though, Russell says the loss of Dennison, with whom she had a close relationship (the show teased the possibility of a romance early on, culminating in a passionate kiss in season three) is \u201creally hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think what that does to Kate is really hard, especially at this moment when her morals are being put to the test because he was such a moral character, so I think that fuels all of those doubts,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then you have Hal on the other line going, \u2018This is what you got to do. You got to do this.\u2019 It\u2019s an enormous loss for the show, for a lot of people who loved him, too. But it\u2019s good storytelling ultimately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKinnear, while sad that he won\u2019t get to keep working with his Diplomat colleagues, is confident the bonds he\u2019s forged with them will continue after he\u2019s left the show. And he\u2019d be happy to return in a guest capacity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019d be fascinated to see where Trowbridge does end up,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are so many different roles that a retired politician finds themselves in, and I\u2019m sure he wouldn\u2019t spend the rest of his life lying low.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Kinnear opens up about why Trowbridge resigns; how his character feels about Dennison\u2019s death, as the two had a complicated relationship; and the experience of filming his final episode.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was your reaction when you found out that this is what would be unfolding for your character?<\/p>\n

\n\tI got a heads up from Deb that at some point during the series, Trowbridge will be resigning, and I\u2019ve already felt pretty lucky to have stayed on for as long as I have, given the nature of British politics over the last six or seven years. To finally receive the script, to see, as is typical of Debora\u2019s writing, the psychological acuity she was going to bring to it, and how much she wanted to explore his inner life at the point of his greatest crisis. I sort of knew then that it was going to be a real gift for me as as an actor to be able to to bring that to life.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you feel about about having to leave the show and the people that you were working with for a number of seasons?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, luckily, when you do a job for as long as this has been \u2014 a lot of the time we were hosting our American friends in London, and then luckily they got to return the favor when we were filming in New York \u2014 we\u2019re in and out of each other\u2019s lives to such an extent that we knew that we had formed these lifelong friendships. So while it\u2019s obviously sad that I won\u2019t be able to get to go to work with them. I know that I\u2019ll still be able to hang out with them whenever they\u2019re in town or I\u2019m in their town. To have been able to be part of a series that is so smart, so funny, so dramatic, so psychologically aware and so incredibly well-written and -cast is one thing. But to have left with a load of lifelong friends is far too great.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was it like filming that very surreal episode in which Trowbridge resigns, with the Margaret Roylin hallucinations? That\u2019s such a different approach for this show.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was exciting about it was that you knew that it was a new flavor. Shows like this, they constantly have to reinvent themselves or show new aspects of themselves, and a character that has loomed as large as Trowbridge has over the four seasons, to be able to get into what really sort of drives him, what makes him tick and to see what what it meant to him to be prime minister, to see what losing that meant to him, what destruction it wreaked him, and how he thought he might be seen both as a king and as a clown and that he\u2019d sort of straddled both roles in his prime ministership, and that we get to see them played out for for real, as it were, within this kind of wild dream life.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe never really get a concrete explanation from Trowbridge about why he resigned. How much do you think Kate\u2019s blackmail threat prompted his resignation? What do you think it was really due to?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, I mean, I do think that most politicians have a sort of self-awareness about how they how they can present themselves or how they can operate and what constitutes a line in the sand for something they wouldn\u2019t be able to to go on with. And I think knowing how compromised he would be, particularly in his relationship with America, and how complicated he had been with that, with this new information in their hands, I think he knew: There\u2019s nothing I can do without feeling I\u2019ll be limping on. I won\u2019t be able to do it with the gusto that I feel like I\u2019ve been able to operate for as long as he has been prime minister. I also think events catch up with people, and it caught up with him what happened with Roylin and at the very beginning of season one, and sometimes people\u2019s appetite goes for the the hurly burly of politics, and I think everyone knows that you\u2019re a long time retired and resigned once you leave it so you keep on going, keep on going because there\u2019s nothing quite like it in terms of the status that you\u2019re afforded, in terms of the decisions you get to make, in terms of just the day-to-day excitement of it, but when it\u2019s time to to step away, it must be sort of crashingly obvious, and I think that\u2019s why he leaps to resignation.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe also find out at the end of the previous episode that Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) has died. How does Trowbridge feel about that? He and Dennison had a complicated relationship.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s, I think, definitely another reason that pushes him towards the resignation. They had come up together. They had been adversaries together, but they had found a use for each other as well in the highest echelons of politics. So, to have lost Roylin, to then lose Dennison. Those were the good cop and bad cop on his shoulder, or the devil and the angel on his shoulder, throughout his time. So, I think he felt completely settled as to where he would turn. Lydia obviously provides some support, ballast and encouragement, determination for him. But without Dennison and without Roylin, there was there was an instability to how he saw himself.<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you have a favorite memory or scene from playing Nicol Trowbridge in The Diplomat?<\/p>\n

\n\tDriving up in that Jag outside the big country house, in the first [season], you thought, oh yeah, this is going to be fun. This show\u2019s got something about it. Getting to film in St Paul\u2019s Cathedral, getting to film in all those amazing locations. We\u2019re up in the foreign office, and there were times where you felt \u2014 I see why people in the top echelons of power try and cling on because traveling in big motorcades or helicopters, all the ceremony of it, you can see how it can go to people\u2019s heads and become quite addicted. I\u2019ve made sure that I kept my feet on the ground, but you could see, particularly with a Netflix-style budget affording you. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s not all as quite as grand and as glamorous, being prime minister, but it certainly felt it at times. And I always remember turning the corner dressed in full crown and coronation robes and singing an aria straight down the camera, and I don\u2019t think the crew had any idea what was going on or why I was doing that or dressed like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[The following story contains spoilers from the first four episodes of The Diplomat season four, through \u201cPagliacci.\u201d] Rory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,1019,65106,1094,111,139,69,310624,296749,63274,437],"class_list":["post-634034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-keri-russell","tag-netflix","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rory-kinnear","tag-rufus-sewell","tag-the-diplomat","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634034","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=634034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}