Is The Diplomat on Netflix Based on a True Story?
Netflix's newest binge-worthy show is The Diplomat, which follows Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) as she is appointed the newest U.S. ambassador to the UK in the wake of a terror attack on a British ship.
Is The Diplomat a true story? Mainly, no. It is a political thriller, but uses real-life references to bring the story to life.
The creator of the show, Debora Cahn, was inspired to write this series after meeting with U.S. ambassadors while she was writing for Homeland. "The Foreign Service is the first in and the last out of every disaster in the world, and nobody knows who they are or what they do," Cahn told Netflix's Tudum.
Cahn says she was particularly drawn to the idea of couples who work together in the Foreign Service: "You’re in a situation where the person you love most is also somebody you’re competing with all the time."
In another interview, Cahn said of U.S. diplomats, "They’re quiet and unassuming. Like, this woman who looks like my Aunt Ruthie—she was in the middle of a crisis involving nuclear waste and a truck driving off an icy Siberian road and bombs dropping. Nobody knows what these people do. It’s such front-lines-y kind of activity, and nobody ever knows about it." In The Diplomat, her aim was to tell the story of these career Foreign Service officers.
The locations they use are also real: The U.S. Embassy in London is the site of much of the show, and the building really does look like a modernist cube (see above), designed by KieranTimberlake. And, the U.S. ambassador to the UK does live at Winfield House in Regent's Park.
The Diplomat filmed many scenes in the UK. "We shot in this one place where you walk in the door and in the center of the lobby is a table that Josephine gave Napoleon as a gift, and we have 200 people walking by with large pieces of metal equipment, praying they don’t smash a light into the Napoleon table," Cahn told Vanity Fair.
While the bones of the story are rooted in the reality of the U.S. Foreign Service, the characters who populate the story are completely fictional. Ambassador Wyler (Russell) and her husband Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) are, as far as we know, not based on real people. Indeed, the current U.S. ambassador to the UK is Jane D. Hartley. She was appointed by President Biden; previously, under the Obama administration, Hartley served as the U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco from 2014 until 2017.
Additionally, the attack on the British aircraft carrier off the coast of Iran was entirely made up for the show.
All eight episodes of The Diplomat are now streaming on Netflix.
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