POWER. POLITICS. BETRAYAL. — The Diplomat star Rufus Sewell just teased what’s coming in Season 3, and it’s nothing short of explosive. With shifting alliances and a cliffhanger that left fans reeling, he promises the next chapter dives even deeper into the game of trust and deception.
“The stakes have never been higher,” he says — and one betrayal could change everything.
‘The Diplomat’ Star Rufus Sewell On Season 3’s Shifting Power Dynamics & Yet Another Jaw-Dropping Cliffhanger: “There’s A Betrayal”
Just when you think that Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) couldn’t possibly get himself entrenched in more problems, he proves everyone wrong.
After an explosive Season 2 finale, The Diplomat returned recently to pick up the pieces after Hal accidentally killed the President of the Unites States when he informed him that his vice president was (covertly, at least) behind the bombing of a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. She might’ve had a good reason for it, depending on who you ask, as did Hal for his own decision to inform the POTUS. But, how much does intention matter when the Commander in Chief is dead, and the woman who he’d been trying to oust in hopes of installing his wife Kate (Keri Russell) in her stead is now the most powerful world leader on Earth?
“We come in right after the bombshell of my extremely wise decision to share some very shocking news with someone who has a heart problem, and I still argue that it was, I’d say, a 95% chance that it would have been the right call,” Sewell tells Deadline. “However, as is often the case in real life, it’s the 5% that takes charge. It’s a very, very confusing beginning to the season, because everyone is completely in shock and running around like headless chickens.”
The shred of good news is that this might finally get Kate into the White House, since Grace Penn (Allison Janney) is looking for a VP. That is, until Grace turns to Hal instead.
Sewell spoke with Deadline all about Season 3’s shifting power dynamics and what the shocking ending and its perceived betrayal might mean for Hal and Kate moving forward.
DEADLINE: How would you describe Hal’s journey this season? It’s quite a rollercoaster.
RUFUS SEWELL: The journey basically starts the end of Season 2. So we come in right after the bombshell of my extremely wise decision to share some very shocking news with someone who has a heart problem, and I still argue that it was, I’d say, a 95% chance that it would have been the right call. However, as is often the case in real life, it’s the 5% that takes charge. It’s a very, very confusing beginning to the season, because everyone is completely in shock and running around like headless chickens. For a start, it’s very, very important to me about how insistent he is that Kate is the right person for the job, and he’s desperately worried that it will affect her chances, and he is campaigning vigorously…he’s quite shameless, the way he does it. But, he’s shameless for her, you know. In the end of Episode 1, you discover that she has made a choice. It is a genuine bombshell to them both. Here’s the interesting thing, this is something that I argue…he has his personal ambition. He has his ambition for them. He has his ambition for her. A lot of it is to do with whatever the opportunity is, whatever the play is. For the first couple of seasons, the obvious play was for her to be vice president, and he was doing everything he could, occasionally getting in the way, but everything he could [the make that happen]. But when the door that opens is the door for him to be vice president, it’s a great shock. He wants to say yes, because they need to be in a position of power to do the good things that they want to do, and he wants her, in some way, beside him, but it creates amazing problems for them. It alters the balance of their relationship. It raises a number of questions. It changes the status. As far as I’m concerned, anything that brings Kate and Hal problems, I relish. The more the merrier. Throw them at us. I mean, me and Keri were delighted at the prospect when we found out that this might be happening. It’s great, bad news.
DEADLINE: When do you think he ultimately decides that he needs to say yes? It seems at first that he might almost he afraid to say yes because of how this might affect Kate.
SEWELL: No, I don’t agree. I think from the moment [it happens], the terrible, crushing thought is, ‘Okay, I’m probably going to do this. How do we make this work?’ Now, he doesn’t start talking about that, because he’s trying to find a way to bring her on board before he says yes, because the power he has is not to say yes or hint that he’s going to say yes until he calls some shots. He still has the power. He still has some cards to play, and he wants to play them to her benefit as well. He was always going to say yes…the reason he doesn’t say, ‘Okay, I’m going to take this,’ is because what he wants to do with everyone out of the way is assure, considering he can still threaten before he says yes, that he gets something guaranteed for Kate. I think he’s actually a little bit more honorable. He’s craven in his way, but in surprising ways, he’s quite honorable.
DEADLINE: What do you think ultimately made him better suited for that role, at least in Grace Penn’s eyes, than Kate?
SEWELL: I think in many ways, they’re similar. In one way, it’s real politic, because, in Season 2, there’s a scene when Hal and Kate are sitting outside on the steps of the building, and they’re arguing about what they should do about this piece of news. Hal is arguing, yes, she’s done something wrong. She’s made a bad call here. Kate is arguing, ‘It sounds very much like the kind of thing that you would do.’ He’s not arguing that. That’s not true. It reminds me very much of a scene from Primary Colors, which is quite an influence on all of our thinking [and] is about the early relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton. You know that when someone makes a big mistake, if you don’t capitalize on the spilt blood, you don’t go in for the kill when someone is vulnerable, you’re in the wrong game. There has just to be that sense of, when it’s a time to kill. you kill. So you could argue that it was something that I would have done, but she has done it, which means that we can kill her, and we can take opportunity. We can take advantage of this. You want the good guys to have that kind of cutthroat energy, too, actually, sometimes. So what I’m saying is that he may recognize that, in the reality, he might have had to have made a similar call, but if she’s made it, he’s going to capitalize on the mistake, the fact that they know it. So it doesn’t mean that he is against her, per se. You know that there is a good president there as well as a bad president, like in a lot of cases. So I think, actually, they’re not a bad mix. The way that Hal sticks up for himself and tells her like it is, when he could kind of crawl and kiss her ass when she calls him into the office, might be the moment he wins the job.
DEADLINE: Where do you think things stand with them by the end of the season? They’ve gone on this really rough journey, and Kate goes from wanting nothing to do with him to begging for his forgiveness. But then, he did just capitalize on Trowbridge’s attraction to Kate to get her to seal the deal on a plan that she doesn’t know he and Grace Penn have already reneged on.
SEWELL: It’s very, very complex, and there’s a betrayal there. They would have their very real political reasons. This is one of those, as they say, 50/50 decisions that lands on the presidential desk, because anything that is more clearly 48/52 gets solved, so there is no decision you could make here that wouldn’t possibly have dire consequences. So you could argue that it is politically the expedient, clever, real politic decision to make. But there is a sense, for the first time, that there has been a manipulation. Where we go from here? I cannot say. I don’t know. I haven’t read the next scripts. I’m in for the ride. I know that whatever happens, you’re still dealing with the same characters. So even if some major shifts have happened, no one’s going to be a different person. They’re going to be the same person who’s done a particular thing, and I’m all for that wherever it goes.
DEADLINE: There are a lot of flashbacks this season, which help give a better sense of how Hal and Kate interacted at the beginning of their relationship. How did they inform you and give you deeper perspective on them?
SEWELL: Well, the thing about the flashbacks is that they’re showing something that we, from inside the show, knew about their past. They had been working together, but he’d been the ambassador that she’d been working under, and he was a big believer in her. He was a fan of hers. At the same time, [he was] worried about getting in the way of her progress, because he believed almost more in her than she believed in herself, in terms of what she was actually capable of. That was born out also in Season 1 and Season 2, so we were very aware of that, but to actually embody it and kind of be in it for a while was wonderful for us. It certainly added a sense of poignancy. But it wasn’t something that we weren’t aware of. It’s something we were trying to have in the background anyway, but to actually do it was really nice for us. It made some of the scenes that are played in counterpoint feel kind of more wistful.
DEADLINE: It’s funny to think that maybe their life was simpler during that time, even though they were stationed in Kabul, and that job was anything but easy.
SEWELL: It’s also the secret life, as opposed to the public life, the kind of the joy of it just being theirs as opposed to having to have the personal and the public, which is a big part of this season — what is going on in your real life, and what are you having to show and present to the outside world? Conflicts between those two things are very interesting.
DEADLINE: Do you think there’s a point where Hal gives up on the idea of trying to please Kate with his decision-making?
SEWELL: I think he’ll always retain that, but I think there always would have been certain points when he’d go, ‘I don’t think you’re right. Screw you.’ I think they both have that. He’s not trying to please her to the point that he’s gonna do something he doesn’t believe in, and vice versa. There’s like, ‘Come on, I’ll meet you here,’ but, and then there’s a, ‘Oh, f*ck you’ point for both of them. Sometimes she plays it wrong too. One of the interesting things about this season is she’s actually occasionally flirting with stepping over the mark herself and getting in the way. That’s what’s interesting about the dynamic.
DEADLINE: I’m curious what you think Hal is thinking in some of those moments — like when she jumps in the pool to talk to Todd?
SEWELL: I think a lot of the humor in these moments comes from the fact these are two people who know each other so well. There’s things that might look extraordinary from the outside, you look for their partner, and their partner’s like, [rolls his eyes]. I mean, personally, to watch it, it made me laugh a lot at the time, just the practicality, the annoyance of it. No novelty to it. She’s doing her thing. She’s being a pain in the ass. If I was to be more amused by it, it’s less funny. Do you know what I mean?
DEADLINE: It reminded me of the scene in Season 1 where she tackles you.
SEWELL: Which is our favorite scene of the whole thing. But it has an element of that, because it is, on the face of it, ridiculous [but] completely truthful to the scene. I don’t think it ever goes beyond the realms of what actually the people would do.
DEADLINE: Since you’ve already been renewed for Season 4, what are you looking forward to about the continuation of the story?
SEWELL: It is not my nature to be excited about things that I think will happen. I love not knowing. That’s why, in the past, if ever I’ve been committed or threatened to be committed with a long running series, it has always filled me with anxiety, the anxiety of knowing what’s coming. Actually, for me, I’m the opposite of most people. I don’t know what’s coming, but I trust that whatever happens will contain the seeds, the DNA, of what I love about the show, even if it blows up everything.
