Spoiler alert! The following story contains details from the Season 4 premiere of Netflix's "The Diplomat."
The chaotic Season 4 premiere of Netflix's political thriller "The Diplomat"(now streaming) might give fans of the genre flashbacks to the Jed Bartlett administration.
The series − starring Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford − follows Kate Wyler (Russell), the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom at a time of unprecedented tension between the two allies, and the political machinations of President Grace Penn (Janney). Oh, and the Vice President happens to be Kate's husband Hal (Sewell).
Season 4 of the Emmy-winning series (Janney took home gold for her performance in last year's Season 3) picks up right where
last season left off, with the U.S. having stolen a nuclear doomsday weapon from the Russians right under the nose of the U.K. administration. Kate is horrified, Hal and Grace are smugly happy and Grace's husband, Todd (Whitford), is along for the ride.
Meanwhile, the U.K. hates the U.S. more than ever after a (fake) story about the old U.S. president organizing a false flag attack on a U.K. naval ship. And yet, while the threat of World War III looms over "The Diplomat," somehow the premiere ups the ante when someone takes a shot at President Penn while she's on U.K. soil.
"The first episode of the season is something you usually see happening at the end of a season," Janney, 66, tells USA TODAY. "And I think the fans are going to love it."
Fans of "The West Wing," NBC's 1999-2006 political drama that also co-starred Janney and Whitford, might remember when that show had a presidential assassination storyline, and Whitford's character, Joshua Lyman, was caught in the crossfire.
"I definitely had flashbacks, watching it, doing it," Whitford, 67, says. "It's wild that we've both taken a bullet. It's a lot easier to be shot than to be the one who's worried about the person being shot."
Janney agrees that it's no fun being the character with fake blood all over their costume.
"I've never been assassinated before," she jokes. "It was quite a to-do. It was a lot. And I had to walk around looking like that. That was the craziest thing. I had to walk around for several days looking so horrific. It was pretty funny. But it was a challenge."
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, everyone in the series is concerned about Grace's health and mental health, to an extent where it becomes blatantly sexist.
"When [President Ronald] Reagan got shot, it was all grit," Janney says, referring to the 1981 assassination attempt on the then-president. "It was like, 'Look at him, he's back at work and he's tough.' And for a woman, it's like, 'Do you need to sit down?'"
"It is just absolutely extraordinary that living through what we're living through now [in real-life politics], we think that you wouldn't want to have a woman as president because they'd just be too irrational and emotional," Whitford says.
Grace starts to make increasingly risky decisions as the season progresses. "She doesn't like feeling this vulnerability and so she comes out doubling down on decisions and exerting her power," Janney says. "Everybody starts to question [her] and it makes for interesting decisions on her part. It's geopolitical decisions that put a lot of things at risk."
Grace's decisions put her in direct conflict with Kate and Hal and many other characters in the season, including foreign service officer Stuart Heyford (Ato Essandoh) and White House chief-of-staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah). But is she the season's antagonist or its villain?
"I don't like to think of her as a villain as I play her," Janney says. "I have to believe that she's making tough decisions and doing what she thinks is ultimately for the greater good. It'll be interesting to see if we are lucky enough to get a Season 5. It would be great to see how [the producers] deal with this because where do you go from here? What do you do? And I want to see."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Diplomat' stars talk Season 4 twist that gave them 'flashbacks' to 'West Wing'
