‘The Diplomat’: Rufus Sewell Has Been ‘Waiting’ For This Kate Plot in Season 3

He’s going through all that immediately, so he doesn’t say yes. That’s why he’s like, OK, well I could screw you because I know stuff that I could use. What are you going to give Kate? He secures something, he believes, for Kate. Is he secretly thrilled? No, but it’s a good thing that for him. The play was for Kate to be vice president. Now that door is closed, another one has opened wide open for him to be vice president. F**k yes. It’s what they want to do, they want to change the world. They want to do the things. They want to help. I believe that. And the tools in his armory — deception, manipulation — yes, commonly that we associate the tools of the bad guy, but you want the good guys to have those tools as well.

That’s true.

Do you know what I mean? So, yes, I kind of agree, but I just wouldn’t characterize it that way. And I think Kate instinctively knows that.

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So, in your mind, he really thinks of them as one?

Well, he thinks of them as one and as separate. In this case, absolutely. He can help her. It’s not like he just thinks of them as some blob. But no, he thinks of himself, he thinks of her, and he thinks of them, but definitely he thinks of them as a couple. Absolutely.

When he’s plotting and trying to achieve their goals or achieve his goals, he’s always thinking of Kate in that.

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Yeah. A lot of people ask me questions like this Season 1 and 2, “Is he secretly doing this for himself?” He’s not secretly doing anything for himself. He’s doing things for himself. He’s quite be quite open with her about it: This is the play. I’m radioactive. You are not. I will have something for me. Don’t you worry, but this for you. Maybe I will get this at some point, but right now, this. That didn’t work. This door opens. OK, it’s me. Come on. This is what we do. It’s that.

That’s my read on him, too. He’s oddly one of the most honest characters in the show, if not kind of the most honest sometimes. He would withhold things out of necessity and it screws some people over, but he is pretty weirdly honest.

Exactly. And there’s a scene in Season 1 where he explains to someone, you don’t tell [Kate] what you’re going to do because she’ll shy. He has been manipulative and deceitful in his plans to get her promoted beyond her ideas of her capabilities, so he is an enormous supporter and fan of Kate’s beyond what she has always thought of for herself. Not that she doesn’t have her belief in herself, etc., but still, he really is a believer that she can do the stuff that she thinks she can’t do. Bullsh*t. You can do that. But it doesn’t mean that he’s not the way he is. These things can seem contradictory, but they exist in the same person.

How does this connect to the finale, when Hal gives Kate this assist to seal the deal with Trowbridge in the Poseidon debacle? How does what he planned in secret with Grace benefit Kate?

This I’m not sure about. I could postulate, but then I might read Episode 1 of Season 4 and find out, oh, OK. Do you what I mean? The question I asked myself is what other way could he have done it? And I don’t believe there is another way that he could have done it. It’s just a question of then what do you do? I think he just said, we’ll worry about this later, but this is a matter of preservation of the order of the world, geopolitics, geopolitical history for the next thousand years possibly. But this will decide the future of everything, this moment in terms of the power balance in the world, China, Russia, in a very, very precarious time, this is big-stake stuff. They’ve decided either to let Russia get this terrifying nuclear weapon that will alter the balance of power or get it themselves. That is the kind of thing that will affect massively the history of the world from now on, so he’s made that call. I don’t think if you game it out, there is another call that you could make that wouldn’t risk screwing it up.

Clifton Prescod / Netflix

And of course, he’s the vice president of the United States. He has to make a decision that benefits the United States, right?

Yes, exactly. So maybe this is something that he admits has not happened before, but I’m saying up until that point, this was the state of play. Maybe I’ll find out to what extent that is. Luckily with good writing, it’s not going to be a blip that disappears. It will have a reverberating effect. I’m sure it won’t be the case that now he’s just an entirely different person, but that is an element that has been brought to life that might not have been so much at play before. And we’ll see how much that continues. But it’s very interesting.

Especially because they had just reunited moments before.

Exactly. And he doesn’t know that she’s going to come in and do that [apologize and ask him to take her back]. So it makes it seem a different thing with that in retrospect. Otherwise, if they were estranged, it would be a different thing. But that is something that’s happened that makes it seem more of a betrayal because that’s moments before that has happened.

Define Hal’s final shot of the season for me. What is he feeling in that last moment?

Well, it’s very difficult to say because that wasn’t actually the final shot of the season. It’s very difficult for me to retrofit an answer for you because there was a reedit of that scene that put different shots in different [places]. So I don’t want to go too much into this, but I don’t really know what to say about that because the way it was cut, that was before. And there was a moment when there’s all of us being photographed when they say, “You’re all looking a bit grim. Could you smile?” That was the thing before the smile.

I remember thinking, “I better look grimmer,” because I don’t want to do too big a smile, so a little smile will register. But that is now the final, [shot] which I’m happy with, but I don’t really know what to tell you about.

Clifton Prescod / Netflix

It definitely tees up Season 4 very interestingly.

It does the job very, very well, so I’m not complaining, but actually the process of how I arrived at that. Well, I’ll tell you.

You arrived at that through a completely different process.

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[Laughs] Yes, exactly. Well, it’s the magic of movies, baby.

Grace really warms up to Hal this season. Do you think they bring out a more power-hungry side in each other? I think they’re unexpectedly enjoying working together.

I don’t know yet. Maybe. That’s one interpretation. But power hungry? I don’t think so yet. It might well be that they do. That’s such a big question. I trust [Debora Cahn] to make it very, very interesting. But I’m not sure what this will bring. I don’t think what happens at the end is a reflection of them bringing out a side in each other. I think actually that’s two minds thinking in the same way. He may well think that way would without her, too. Who knows what other presidents would’ve done in a situation like that, but that is a very interesting way it might go. I just do not feel qualified to tell you that. I have said over and over again that I’m happy for wherever Deb takes it. I may well regret saying that one day, but we will see [laughs].

As long as whatever new characteristics come up don’t blight the other characteristics that are there, I’m happy for more to be added and for that to possibly alter and curdle other things. I want it to become more rich.

Talk about the contrast of Hal kind of being the better partner this season. We see Kate learning through her relationship with Callum, Aidan Turner’s character, that she can be the problem sometimes.

Well, I’ve been waiting for this. Thank you very much [smiles]. No, it’s been a developing theme I think. In Season 2, the idea of how much of this is Hal, what Hal is like, and how much of it is actually having to be the one that makes the decisions? How much of it is actually having to be in a position of power — like the one I was talking about, the final decision where there is the 50-50ish decision that lands on the president’s desk — where there is no choice that does not have dire consequences for people who do not deserve it. Is it the person or is it the office? People fall into patterns in relationships. One can be in the pattern of being the blamer and the blame me, the forward stepper and the backward stepper, etc. And these things can alter back and forth sometimes over a relationship. But they’re in a pattern where she blames him for stuff and he is part of that little dance.

Enough things are changing that there’s an interesting swap over of the roles, which is fabulous for us. And that is often the case though, or when someone does improve in the way you’ve been complaining about them, you don’t like it. It’s not always the case that changing the way you’ve been asked to change is greeted with gratitude. Sometimes there’s a kind of confused rage because people end up in relationships often for a reason and not the reason that they tell themselves. Sometimes the problems that you deal with are ones that you were looking for. And I think that is very much the case with them that suddenly that change in the dynamic brings things out. And it’s also very funny for her to be visiting Washington and stepping on toes. It’s great.

The Diplomat, Season 4 TBA, Netflix