How ‘The Diplomat’ Stars Inspired Season 4’s Most Quietly Romantic Scene

The Diplomat exists at the inflection point where romance and political power combine. We’ve seen how work impacts the personal lives of Kate (Keri Russell) and Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) since Season 1, and The Diplomat Season 4 shows three couples of different ages and relationship phases navigating different tiers of geopolitical power.

The intimacy on display with each couple is profound in its specificity; viewers get an up-close look at private conversations between longtime spouses. But the season’s most romantic moment is with the youngest couple of the bunch, Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) and Eidra Park (Ali Ahn), and the scene was inspired by Essandoh and Ahn themselves, according to The Diplomat creator Debora Cahn. Warning: The Diplomat spoilers ahead!

Season 4 premiered on October 15 with all eight episodes. In it, Kate and Hal’s marriage is crumbling under the weight of their respective roles as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom and vice president of the United States, and Kate finds herself in Hal’s usual position of having to defend choices she made on her own that have personal and professional impact on both of them. A failed assassination attempt on President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) snowballs into her becoming more willing to risk human life with military decisions, and First Gentleman Todd Penn (Bradley Whitford) is concerned at first, but eventually becomes the biggest enabler of her decisions.

Grace becomes more cutthroat and intolerant of disagreement, resulting in her recalling Stuart from his post as the U.S. London embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission after he submitted a dissent of her military decisions on the State Department’s Dissent Channel. Hours before this unjust punishment, Stuart and Eidra, Chief of the London CIA Station, were getting ready for a formal G7 Summit.

Eidra puts on a pink dress as Stuart puts on his suit. Without notice, as if they’ve done this so many times on their work travels that it’s now second nature, Eidra slides her suitcase across the room to make a seat for Stuart. He sits down without questioning it; Eidra turns her side to Stuart so he can zip up her dress, and they become two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly together. The unspoken accommodations for each other’s height differences in this bedroom setting silently communicate the feeling of home they have with each other, and imply that they’ve known each other long enough and so well that these actions are as easy as breathing.

Erika Kuenka/Netflix

Without saying a word, the story showed us how in love Stuart and Eidra are with each other through their comfortable, second-nature intimacy. And it’s immediately capped off with them singing a song as they finish getting dressed, the lyrics of which allow viewers to hear the characters say I love you to each other for the first time.

The lack of an intentional declaration of love is an expression of character as well. It’s even more romantic than when Eidra proposed to considering a marriage proposal in Episode 6.

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“They haven’t said it to each other,” Ahn told TV Insider. “I definitely think Eidra is in the camp of like, well, clearly I don’t need to say it. Clearly you know.” Essandoh told us the suitcase scene is Cahn “stewing up her beautiful witches’ brew of just beautiful human moments” inspired by the cast.

“If we’re different actors, she would not have come up with that moment,” Essandoh said, “but she’s watching our performances and going, oh, hey, what would be good is this moment where you see that they’re used to each other and getting dressed with each other, and one guy is really tall, and the other person is really small, and this might work to bring him down to her level. It’s beautiful.”

Cahn explains how the idea came to her on set while filming a previous episode in Season 4.

“Ato’s really into Prince,” she says. “We had used a Prince song in a previous episode, and during the rehearsal, he sang along to it and acted out the whole thing. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is not part of the scene.’ And in that moment, I was like, ‘OK, we have to find some reason why he does exactly what he did in this rehearsal where he sings along and dances along, because his Prince impression is so great.'”

Idris Solomon/Netflix

“But then once we were doing it, it was like, ‘Well, he shouldn’t be that good at it. Stuart wouldn’t be that good at it,'” Cahn continues. “It was this opportunity to see this intimate moment between the two of them where they’re both kind of humming it at each other, but shy in their own way. And then she leaves the room and he just f***ing opens it up and tears it out.”

Ahn explained why the moment is so romantic.

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“The brilliance of the writing is that there’s not even words exchanged in that moment. They’re not even talking to each other,” she said. Ahn shared that she frequently asked Cahn during filming what Stuart gets out of their romantic relationship, as “Eidra is not giving him much.” But the suitcase scene answered her questions perfectly.

“That scene was like, oh right, it is the unspoken vocabulary, the way that they take care of each other and give space for each other and understand the stakes of what they’re doing,” Ahn said, “that they can, while they’re both about to deal with some serious geopolitical sh*t, the moment right before they’re getting dressed up and listening to music and just having a quiet moment in each other’s presence before they have to go launch.”

The pink dress was a shocking choice production made for Eidra, Ahn admitted, but “what I think is so great is that Eidra is the character that is the most emotionally kind of masked and withholding.”

“The fact that she is the one driving some of the most earnest romance this season actually works because it kind of offsets,” she added. “And the way that scene is shot, the light is so soft, and it really does have almost like a Pretty Woman vibe. There’s a diaphanous quality, and she’s in pink. I remember when they picked the pink dress, I thought, pink, OK, that is really on the nose here. But it works because it’s balanced out with the kind of hardness of her the rest of the time.”

Nick Wall/Netflix

The singing made Ahn dig deeper into Eidra’s mind as well, and she concluded that it’s a side of her character that being loved by Stuart brings out of her.

“It’s really sweet. I had to think about it. I was like, how does she relate to music?” Ahn said. “I think of it as something that Stuart brings out in her. She could be pretty spartan, so I think he allows her to allow for some play.”

Stuart and Eidra’s future is now directly impacted by what Grace did in the finale. His recalling means he’s being sent back to the U.S. without even being able to pack one bag. The next time we’re in that hotel room with Eidra, she’s packing up all of Stuart’s things, and the sunny warmth of the room we saw before is gone.

Hopefully, we’ll get The Diplomat Season 5 to show us what happens next with Stuart and Eidra.

The Diplomat, Seasons 1-4 streaming now, Netflix