This warped West Wing might be Keri Russell’s best work yet

10 hours ago 3

By Debi Enker

October 28, 2025 — 12.16pm

She’s played a bouncy Mouseketeer, a dreamy college student and a ruthless Russian assassin. Now, in The Diplomat, Keri Russell is Kate Wyler, the US ambassador to the UK, a job in which she ricochets around as if she’s trapped in a pinball machine.

Official position and personal circumstances rattle her character regularly. The actress, though, appears to have taken major gear changes through her varied career in her stride.

Keri Russell as Kate Wyler in season three of The Diplomat.

Russell made her unplanned TV debut as a teenager after accompanying friends to an open casting call where she was offered a place in The All New Mickey Mouse Club. But as the title character in J.J. Abrams’ romantic coming-of-age drama, Felicity (1998-2002), she really made an impact.

Her next major TV role could not have been more different: a Russian spy planted deep in the American suburbs and raising two children with her husband. In The Americans (2013-18), Elizabeth Jennings is icy, fearsomely efficient and ferociously committed to her calling.

In her TV career, Russell has disappeared for years between major projects, to emerge with something quite unlike what she’s done before. She’s accomplished that again with The Diplomat, now in its third season on Netflix.

This series comes from creator and showrunner Debora Cahn, who worked on The West Wing. The influence of Aaron Sorkin’s award-winning series (1999-2006) is evident in the busy, behind-the-podium perspective on politics and the walking-and-talking approach pioneered by The West Wing.

That signature staging style is ideal for catching the routine flow of an erudite collection of characters who work at the highest levels of government amid a perpetual sense of urgency. In both shows, crises erupt continually, and the high-powered officials barely have time for sit-down meetings as they debate their positions on matters of national and international importance. The propulsive scenes visually announce to viewers, strap yourselves in and watch them run. And Russell is right at home doing just that.

It’s no coincidence that The Diplomat crew includes Alex Graves, one of the best West Wing directors. In an Easter-egg-style treat for fans of Sorkin’s White House drama, beloved stalwarts Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford are together again in the latest season as President Grace Penn and her husband, Todd.

The West Wing influence is also discernible in the finely calibrated and often witty counterpointing of personal and political affairs. At the heart of these is Kate’s tempestuous relationship with wily husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). Intimate relationships involving other couples also flavour a number of global relationships, with all of them depicted as continually shifting and subject to negotiation. And it’s never entirely clear whether characters are acting out of personal beliefs or professional priorities.

Allison Janney as Grace Penn, Bradley Whitford as Todd Penn in The Diplomat.

As Russell told Rolling Stone, “Debora’s genius is finding the minutiae or the ridiculous or the funny in very important moments.” There might be psychologically revealing sex scenes just before a top-level summit, or an injury incurred while shucking oysters will suddenly disrupt an already-strained gathering.

But beyond the similarities between these two shows separated by nearly a decade, The Diplomat displays none of the optimism or faith in the good intentions of the American government that fuelled West Wing. Now, the US isn’t depicted as a reliable or trustworthy player on the global stage: it will attack and deceive allies when it deems it to be advantageous. In Cahn’s fictional world, the defining aspect of America’s conduct is that it will be remorselessly self-serving.

That’s the febrile environment in which Kate Wyler must operate and why she’s frequently rushing around and off-balance. Russell has noted affectionately that her character is “a hot mess of a firecracker”. She makes mistakes and some of her strategies backfire. Sometimes it’s Hal, the US vice president through much of the latest season, causing the ructions. The spark between them, with its tantalising tussle between two smart, experienced and ambitious people, is one of the show’s valuable assets.

Rufus Sewell and Keri Russell in The Diplomat.

But there’s also her position as an American abroad endeavouring to juggle her responsibilities with the customs and expectations of key ally. And she has to manage its sly, sometimes smitten and sometimes spiky Prime Minister, Nicol Trowbridge (adroitly played by Rory Kinnear).

Through its run, The Diplomat’s wardrobe and make-up departments have shone as the series makes the most of its star. From the start, Kate’s hair has been a masterstroke: she always looks like a woman in need of a hairbrush. She’s presented as a person who’s too busy to fret about her appearance and cares little for such trivialities, striding around purposefully in practical, all-purpose, dark-coloured pant-suits with more important things on her mind. Or at least she does until the strategic Grace Penn advises her that a woman in public life will be assessed on her appearance more than any of the policies that she might promote.

And since Russell is beautiful, when Kate is compelled to frock-up for functions and grudgingly struggles into a designer gown that someone on her staff has selected for her, she emerges looking as if she could step straight on to a catwalk. Here, Cahn has it both ways: presenting a capable woman who battles to be taken seriously, who cares nothing for fashion or her appearance, but who totally nails it when required.

The punchy finale of the new season is fitting for a series that has so nimbly played off the personal and political, and kept the crises coming. And it’s a shock realisation by Russell’s Kate in the closing moments that makes you want to see more.

The Diplomat is streaming on Netflix now.

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