Debora Cahn was not always a political animal. Before she interviewed with Aaron Sorkin for a writing job on “The West Wing,” her first TV gig, she desperately Googled how a bill becomes a law. She was hired, then spent her first years in the writers’ room trying to pretend she understood the conversation.
“I was absurdly out of my depth,” she said.
Cahn is more comfortable in those depths now. After “The West Wing,” she wrote for “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Homeland” before creating “The Diplomat,” on Netflix. The third season premiered last week. At the show’s shifting center are Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) and Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), career civil servants who in Season 1 receive a surprise transfer to England when Kate becomes the ambassador to Britain.
In Season 3 — spoilers begin here — Hal is elevated suddenly to the vice presidency, while Kate experiences crises both romantic and nuclear. This season also reunites Allison Janney, who plays the new president, with her “West Wing” colleague Bradley Whitford, who plays the first gentleman.
During an hourlong chat a few days after the season premiere, Cahn discussed inspiration, absurdity and whether Kate will ever take a vacation. Friendly and forthcoming, she was also as image-savvy as any public-facing official, asking that any crying be kept off the record. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What was the inspiration for “The Diplomat”?
I wanted to do for the world what “The West Wing” did inside the Beltway. I wanted to look at our country’s relationship with other countries. Both my parents are immigrants, and I was raised with an immigrant’s extremely fervent patriotism. My mom was a hidden child in the Holocaust, and she remembers American soldiers coming in to liberate. It was a very heroic vision of what this country does in other places. As I grew into an adult and saw what we were doing, that’s when I started focusing on that rift between who we intend to be in the world versus who we are in the world.
When I watched Season 1, I couldn’t get a handle on the show’s tone, the balance of the comedy and the intrigue, the politics and the sex.
To be perfectly candid, I didn’t know what the balance was. It took a while to figure it out. I’m always looking for a balance of realistic drama with a healthy dose of the absurd, which is either good taste or just a big cop-out because drama is so much easier than comedy. I also wanted to create a show that had some lightness in it because if you’re talking about the way that we as a country deal with another country, you’re talking about conflict. So lighten it up, however the hell you can.
At the center is this relationship between Kate and Hal. Is this a good relationship?
Kate and Hal’s relationship has a lot of similarity to an alcohol or drug addiction. When it’s good, it’s really, really good. She goes back to Hal like an alcoholic goes back to a bottle.
American politics has become only more ridiculous since the show began. How much room is left for satire?
There’s none. It isn’t what I want to write about, and if I did want to write about it, I just don’t have that much imagination. The wackadoo [expletive] that’s going on, it’s so absurd that in fiction it would seem like a cartoon. In life, it just seems like a nightmare.
“The Diplomat” is about public servants, specifically those in the foreign service. Season 3 arrives when the Trump administration has cut support for them. How does that change the message of the show?
The specific inspiration for the show is a woman named Beth Jones. She was one of the experts who came in to speak to the writers at “Homeland.” She was an ambassador and she had a life that sounded like it was a superhero’s. We called her the superhero in the pantsuit. She had these amazing stories and a kind of a life I hadn’t seen on TV. I was like, Well, this intersects with a lot of things I’m interested in, and wouldn’t it be great to tell these cool stories about people who are out there doing stuff we don’t even know about? We feel fortunate that we have a platform to keep talking about these people whose lives are being ruined and whose experience and knowledge are being tossed away.
I imagine that when you conceived the series, you didn’t think you’d have to argue for the importance of the foreign service. Do you now feel like you have to be more responsible in how you craft the conduct of these characters?
We already had a relationship with the audience where we looked at these people as three-dimensional. And we try really hard to make every character initially well-intentioned and intelligent and regularly prone to failure, which I think is human.
Would the government be better if there were more people like Kate in it?
There are thousands of people like Kate in it. What I find moving about the government is it’s millions of people. It’s so many people. Some of them are there because they’re venal and corrupt, but a lot of them are there because they believe in democracy and they love this country and they want to help. That’s what they do every day.
The finale teases the possibility of an affair between Grace and Hal. Are you going there?
Well, we’re going to have to see, right?
Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford are delightful additions. Will there be more dialogue about savory baked goods.
Because you mentioned it, yes. Maybe it’ll be an everything bagel.
If the show is built on relationships, it also depends on twists. How many more geopolitical shockers can you reasonably pull off?
I am surprised anytime we pull off even one. Every season, we find ourselves in a situation and I’m like: “Nobody’s going to buy this. This is just completely absurd.”
So how many more crises can you put these people through?
I don’t know. We’ll keep doing it as long as we’re still having a good time.
This is the first show you’ve created. What have you learned from it?
That the nature of putting together an organism this big on a bunch of different continents is that something is always going to be falling apart, and that doesn’t mean you’re in crisis. I am having a good time in this job. It worked out the way I wanted it to. And I have to remind myself that when things are crazy, that doesn’t mean something is wrong — that’s just the job.
The season is just out, and you’re about to go back into production. Will you ever take a vacation?
My husband and I discuss that a lot. But you don’t get to do this forever. For a while, I was like, Oh my God, when is there going to be a break? There’s going to be a break when it’s over. This is a magical time.
Will Kate and Hal ever take a break? It’s hard to imagine them lying on a beach.
I think they would get antsy. If they were lying on a beach, they would start talking to somebody in the next blanket who turned out to be a Serbian dissident, and they’d have to smuggle him out of the country.
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media.
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