For now, though, Russell is enjoying the last bits of summer, having just moved her oldest son River into college.
“For better or worse, the nature of our jobs is we travel a lot, so I think my kids are used to coming and going and going to a new place and dealing with airports and moving your stuff and knowing how to live,” Russell, who shares two children with ex-husband Shane Deary and one with partner Matthew Rhys, says of the college drop-off. “So in a way, it’s easier than families who have maybe never experienced that, have never been separated. So River, my oldest kid, he’s had practice, so I feel like he was OK. The younger siblings, I think it was emotional because they’re like, ‘oh my gosh, now it’s just us.’ There were some tears from the younger siblings.”
The 49-year-old is “really excited” about this stage of life, eager to visit her friends’ fellow college freshmen and bug them about what discussions are happening on campuses, what music they’re listening to, what their views are on the world.
“I just want to take them to dinner and leech off of their young minds,” she says.
Russell herself might not be a college kid, but she’s exactly the kind of person whose thoughts you’d want insight into. Yes, her work on “The Diplomat” has made her increasingly plugged into modern politics — but she’s also just fun to talk to. She curses, she drinks beer during photo shoots, and she talks about her work in a way that the passion is innately felt.
“This is one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever done,” Russell says of “The Diplomat,” taking a sip from a Peroni. “It is such a sweet spot for me because it’s a way to make a show about issues I care about, but it’s a way to wrap them up in this candy bar of a snack that is palatable through humor and a little bit of relationship stuff and some location porn. But the issues that we’re talking about are things that I care about.”
For those few who haven’t binge-watched the series, “The Diplomat” follows Kate Wyler, a diplomat who was expecting to head to the Middle East on a new posting when instead she was assigned to be the ambassador to the Court of St. James’s amid political turmoil. Her marriage to Hal, a former ambassador played by Rufus Sewell, is crumbling at the start of the show, but with her new job in London comes pressure to salvage it. The show is equal parts edge-of-your-seat political drama and delicious relationship tension.
“With the complete dismantling of USAID, our show is truly a love letter to the foreign service and everything that’s being destroyed right now,” Russell says. “So as fun and ridiculous and silly as our show is, which I love all those parts, I also love the good of it too, and the weight of it and the people we’re trying to represent, and I hope that they feel that we are representing them, but in a fun desserts kind of way.”
Russell describes the experience of making a show about American politics, in the current landscape, as “wild, really wild.”
“The thing that we have going for us is that Debora [Cahn, the show’s creator] always says, ‘we’re not writing headlines.’ So, yes, things do end up coming true that we’re writing about, but that’s only because the writers meet with people in government and we say, a year-and-a-half ahead of time, ‘what are you afraid of?’ And then a lot of the things that she ends up writing about do come to pass, but that’s just because she guessed right.
“It feels good to make a show about government at this time,” Russell adds. “I think especially in this country, we’ve had it good for so long, and maybe this is the moment where it shifts a little bit like what the U.K. went through with its decline in power. It feels good to make a show shining a light on what all these people do, which I think in our country, we don’t really know what the government does. I know I’m paying a lot more attention to what’s going on. But on the fun side, it’s delicious. It’s so fun. The marital exploration is so good this season, and maybe that’s just my taste, but I f–king love [Cahn’s] writing. She can do no wrong in my book, and the way she starts this season off is so great.”
Season Three picks up right where the second one left off, with President Rayburn’s death and subsequent news that Vice President Grace Penn, played by Allison Janney, is now president. Hal has been pushing for Kate to take over as vice president, but with the presidential death suddenly all bets are off.
“It’s really interesting to see because there’s all these incredibly specific things that happen when a shift like that occurs,” Russell says. “So they go through all of that and then what it does to the relationship, Kate’s relationship, her marriage, and then what it does with the marriage of the two countries of the United States and the U.K. and how everything affects everyone…it’s great. It has a really nice balance of some really personal things to do with marriages and relationships, and then also the world politics of it all, which feel very relevant.”
Season Three was filmed on location in London but moved stage sets to New York, so both Russell and Cahn could balance the shoot schedule with their families.
“She had always pitched the show to me as starting in London and then being able to come home. And what we did is just moved anything that shot inside a stage back to New York so that our children didn’t forget who we were,” Russell says. “We still plan on going back to London, and we both love London so much, so we still plan on going back and we still plan on having location porn. It’s the fantasy of the show.”
Cahn’s writing comes up again as what drew Russell to the project to begin with.
“For me it’s always the writing. Probably I would have a different career, like a more lucrative career or something, if I cared about other things,” Russell says. “But all I care about is the writing, and I just think that’s my entry point. [Cahn] has that really great combination of really easy, witty dialogue that’s smart and funny, but I thought the story has a really nice balance of being weighted in something that feels important but fun while you do it.”
And then there’s Kate Wyler herself: no nonsense, sharp, uninterested in the pomp of the job — and unable to keep her clothes, or her hair, clean.
“I love the messiness. I love the frankness. I love the bossiness, and I like how wrong she is a lot, and not afraid to be wrong,” Russell says. “She’s really a person in a world of a lot of men and isn’t afraid to express her opinions, which I think can be difficult at times.”
“She’s a fantastic actress. She’s got a great intelligence and a great humor. And the two are completely connected,” Sewell says of Russell. “And I think there’s something about the material, which I think we both responded to in the same way, that she has an innate understanding of. I think what she really responds to in the material is how unbelievably real and silly the relationship is. It has all of the dynamics and ridiculousness of a real relationship. It’s very refreshing. She just has an innate understanding of that.”
Russell has become friendly with the former real ambassador to the U.K., Jane Hartley, who she was set to see for dinner the night after this interview.
“She’s so smart, she’s so charming, she’s so curious and easy with people. She can break down policy really easily. She kind of has it all, and she kind of knows everybody,” Russell says. “I’ve been at multiple dinners with her in London where we’ll be sitting at some great restaurant, having amazing food, and we haven’t been able to eat our food because so many people come and talk to Jane. She’s sort of the center of everything going on, and at its best, if you’re doing your job really well, maybe that’s what you are.”
Unlike Kate, Hartley is a bit more interested in fashion. “Jane dresses immaculately,” Russell says, acknowledging that in the real world, dressing well is absolutely part of being an ambassador. Fashion too has become intertwined with the job of an actor, in a way it wasn’t when Russell started her career on the hit show “Felicity” in the late ’90s.
“It’s become so prominent for actors. In the past, if you were a great actor, it didn’t mean you had to dress well, and now there’s a real crossover,” Russell says. “I just think there’s so much money to be made, and there’s so much with social media — for better or worse, because I really don’t think everyone has to be a great dresser. Not everyone is fashionable, let’s be real. So it’s stressful in a way because now everyone is taking their turn and doing it, and not everyone should. Some people should just stick to plain stuff.
“So how has it changed for me?” she asks. “You’re expected to really dress. You’re expected to really show up to everything. And it’s hard sometimes because I’m not a model, I don’t work in fashion. When I do get styling help, I work with someone who I think is so talented and I love his taste so much, but it’s not like we have brand relationships, so it’s not like I can call someone and say, ‘oh, can I have that?’
“I have no social media, so I personally end up wearing sort of simple, plain things because all that stuff, it feels sometimes like a rat race to get dressed sometimes and who’s going to get what, and I’d rather not participate in the competitiveness of that stuff.”
What Russell is interested in is, yes, good writing, and getting to do things on her own terms.
“I feel really fulfilled with this one right now, with ‘The Diplomat.’ I have to say, I really relish working really hard and then having the time off to be with my kids or my friends or myself. So right now, I feel really satisfied. I’m not desperate to go cram in a movie between seasons, but that’s just me,” she says. “I really like time off, to read and kind of fill back up and feel rested to come back. I’m sure when Debora gets sick of writing the show, which is probably soon, then I’ll start looking for other stuff, but right now the work is enough, and then I’m interested in my own life.”
Source: https://wwd.com