The United States has an older male president who is expected to pass the baton to his younger vice president. But something happens to disrupt these plans, and the White House races to find a solution that will allow them to solidify the legacy of their commander in chief.
This is the political landscape in Netflix's fictional Washington The diplomatas viewers learn early in the first season of the Netflix series that the show's vice president, Grace Penn (played by Allison Janney in the show's second season, out Thursday), is embroiled in a scandal that White House aides say , will force her to resign. . Aides are also secretly examining Keri Russell's career diplomat, Kate Wyler, newly installed as American ambassador to the United Kingdom, replacing Penn.
Despite the markedly different circumstances around The diplomatof the succession drama, fans could be forgiven for thinking about the political thriller over the summer as the real US president, 82-year-old Joe Biden, was expected to pass the baton to his young female vice president, Kamala Harris, and faces growing pressure to abandon his 2024 re-election bid in the wake of Biden's disastrous performance in the first televised debate against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Ultimately, Biden, who initially insisted on staying in the race before dropping out in a surprise announcement in mid-July, passed the baton to Harris, ending his presidential campaign and endorsing her as his successor.
Now, both in real life and in The diplomatall eyes are on the vice president as Harris is the Democratic presidential candidate and Penn features prominently in the second season of the Netflix series.
It's a turn of events told by showrunner Debora Cahn The Hollywood journalist it was “unintentional”.
“I didn't want to hold up a mirror,” Cahn said of the similarities between the show's succession drama and what happened over the summer. “I mean, we were definitely dealing with similar dynamics, and we were aware of that when we came up with the story two years ago, but we thought we were in the same neighborhood, but not in the same house. And in the end we ended up sleeping in the same bed for a while while the scene was on the front page.”
And Cahn describes as “a little unsettling” the way things that happened on the show seemed to echo real life.
“We're commenting on a world where certain problems emerge, but we're not really commenting on a specific situation,” he said. “But we got to a point where, for example, we recorded a scene where a character came out in a powder blue dress, and then two days later, Kamala Harris was at a rally in Georgia with hundreds of thousands of people And [wearing] a powder blue dress.”
He added: “It all seems much more deliberately dialogued than it actually was.”
When asked about the parallels between real life and the political dynamic of the show, the actor who plays The diplomatRayburn president Michael McKean said it was “interesting” but highlighted the differences between the two worlds.
“It's already different enough [when there was discussion of Biden passing the torch this summer] it was like, 'Oh, that's quaint.' It's an interesting thing,” he said THR at the show's season two premiere in New York. “We still can't see around corners. The comparisons are few and the possibilities are many in this kind of political world.”
In addition to Penn, who viewers first see in season two after she was widely discussed but not seen in season one, The diplomat season two explores the aftermath of the explosion at the end of season one that appeared to affect both Kate's husband and former ambassador Hal, Rufus Sewell, and his colleague Stuart (Ato Essandoh). Additionally, Kate and her team spend the second season investigating his theory that the British government is behind the attack on the country's transport ship that started the series.
All six episodes of DiplomaticThe second season of will be available for streaming on Netflix starting Thursday, with the series already renewed for a third season.