Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell in 'The Diplomat' season four. Courtesy of Netflix Logo text Keri Russell‘s Kate Wyler is working to “repair a marriage … in a major security crisis” in the latest trailer for season four of Netflix‘s political thriller The Diplomat, set to return Oct. 15.
While the first season four teaser, released last month, focused more on personal matters (specifically the reconciliation of central couple Kate and Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell)), the latest preview deals with geopolitical issues.
In the trailer (below), Kate questions Hal, also the U.S. vice president in the fictional world of the show, and president Grace Penn’s (Allison Janney, who won an Emmy Monday night for her supporting role in the political thriller), aggressive approach to foreign policy.
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It was revealed in the closing moments of season three that Hal and Grace had schemed to steal a Russian nuclear weapon, with Kate figuring out what they did.
As the trailer kicks off, she’s shown confronting Grace and Hal about what they did.
“My concern is that the two of you together are, yeah, dangerous,” she’s heard saying. “Who pumps the brakes when you two are in the room?”
Later she’s shown telling Grace that she’s concerned her “tolerance for risk to human life seems higher than it was.”
And she wonders if these “over the line” moves are instead part of a “culture of consistent lawlessness, and I’m part of it.”
The preview also features more about the two marriages at the center of the show, with Hal telling Kate he “can’t live like this wondering if you’re about to run” and Grace’s husband, Todd (Bradley Whitford) observing that his wife is “different” and he needs a “job that takes me away,” even floating the possibility of something in London, which would bring him closer to Russell’s character.
Netflix teases the upcoming season as “two marriages threaten to eat each other alive.”
“One catastrophic moment shatters the fragile peace Kate Wyler brokered between the U.S. and U.K., as well as the crumbling marriage she’s trying to save,” the synopsis continues. “While she fights to stem the bleeding, President Grace Penn and VP Hal Wyler’s conspiracy to steal Russia’s most powerful weapon hurtles the United States toward war. Kate and Todd, at best an uneasy pair, unite to stop the Grace-Hal alliance from upending the balance of power abroad and at home.”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in May, as The Diplomat was filming its fourth season in Italy (they also shot scenes in New York and the U.K.), Janney indicated more risk taking from her character, who was previously revealed to have been behind the carrier ship attack that kicked off the series.
“Grace is not afraid to make bold decisions and to suffer the consequences, whatever they are, and she’ll stand behind what decision she makes,” she said. “Not everyone agrees with her.”
And showrunner Debora Cahn teased ongoing fallout from the carrier ship incident.
“There was always a very long plan for what the carrier meant to the relationship between these two countries,” Cahn explained. “The consequences reverberate through the third season and will continue through the fourth. It’s satisfying for me to be able to make one geopolitical error resonate over a number of seasons. Look at the relationships between countries. We are still dealing with things that happened decades, sometimes centuries ago. Certainly with the U.K., the origin story [of the U.S.] will always be hanging over the way that we interact now.”
Cahn also shared that while four seasons is a relatively long run in the streaming era, she’s not yet nearing the end of this tale.
“I grew up in broadcast television, where one season was 22, sometimes 25, episodes, so it feels like we’re just getting started,” she said. “It doesn’t feel to me like we’re in season four. It feels like we’re in the juicy middle.”
The cast of The Diplomat also includes Ato Essandoh, Ali Ahn, Nana Mensah and Rory Kinnear. Cahn and Russell executive produce with Janice Williams, Alex Graves, Peter Noah and Eli Attie.
Season four of the political thriller, consisting of eight one-hour episodes, is set to begin streaming on Netflix on Oct. 15.
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