At the Real Embassy, Netflix’s “Diplomat” draws a diplomatic response
This article contains spoilers for the Netflix series ‘The Diplomat’.
On a quiet Friday morning, Jane D. Hartley sat in the garden room of Winfield House, the noble residence of the US ambassador to London, listing the many ways in which her life differs from that of Kate Wyler, the fictional ambassador played by Keri. Russell in the hit Netflix drama ‘The Diplomat’.
“The concept that you could fly from one country to another without ever raising your hand on Capitol Hill,” Ms. Hartley said, noting that Ambassador Wyler never had to face Senate confirmation. “Sorry, that’s not happening.”
“I also don’t have a DCM that brings racks of clothes to my office and tells me what to wear,” she said, referring to the mission’s deputy chief, who acts as the ambassador’s fashion stylist in the series. “I wear my own clothes.”
A hazy mix of spy thriller and soap opera, “The Diplomat” debuted last month as the most-watched series on Netflix and remains in the top 10. It’s become a compulsive watch in foreign policy circles – easily mocked for its Bond – meets-Bourne plot twists, but also a source of satisfaction among diplomats, who feel that Hollywood is finally giving them the recognition it has long given CIA operatives (although the series has one too).
“It’s about goddamn time we were the heroes,” said Matthew Palmer, the real deputy chief of the London mission.
Suddenly, Ms. Hartley finds her job the object of fascination, even at the highest levels of the State Department and the White House. She said Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, both quizzed her on the intricacies of the eight-part series after watching it.
As Mrs. Hartley’s meeting with a reporter drew to a close, her husband, Ralph Schlosstein, quietly walked down the hall on his way upstairs. As a Wall Street investor, he divides his time between New York and London.
But he does not attend Ms. Hartley’s meetings with British officials, nor wrestle with her in the garden outside Winfield House during a visit from the US President – as Ambassador Wyler and her husband, Hal, played a jealous, short-tempered fellow diplomat. by British actor Rufus Sewell.
“I think my security could do something if that happened,” said 73-year-old Ms. Hartley, a well-connected Democratic Party fundraiser. She’s on her second plum assignment, having served as ambassador to France from 2014 to 2017 (John Adams is the only other U.S. ambassador to be posted to both Paris and London).
With a background as a television executive, Ms. Hartley is sympathetic to the creative freedom Hollywood often takes. On Tuesday, she will welcome Mrs. Russell, who memorably played a sleeper Russian spy on “The Americans,” and the show’s creator, Debora Cahn, whose credits include “Homeland” and “The West Wing,” to Winfield House to talk about how the “The Diplomat” stands up to real diplomacy.
“Pop culture diplomats are typically bit players,” Mr. Palmer explained. “In the movie, we might be the ones who come into the meeting and say, ‘But what about the risks to the long-term relationship?'”
Mr. Palmer’s fictional counterpart, Stuart Hayford (played by Ato Essandoh) doesn’t just help dress the Ambassador. He is her constant companion, advising her on the President’s plans to recruit her as Vice President and helping to devise ill-advised schemes, such as when she sneaks into the office of the British Foreign Secretary to kill an Iranian envoy, who promptly drops dead. The Hayford character also dates the chief of the CIA bureau.
In real life, Mr. Palmer does none of those things. Instead, he manages the embassy, one of the largest US diplomatic facilities in the world, with 1,100 employees. But in his spare time, Mr. Palmer has written four diplomatic thrillers, which gives him an appreciation for both the meticulous detail and the faux pas.
The portraits of Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower in Kate Wyler’s office are copies of those in Mrs. Hartley’s. Aaron Snipe, the embassy spokesperson who posted a tentative fact-check of the series on Twitter, noted that although the producers rented a stately mansion outside London as a stand-in for Winfield House, they used digital technology to add the BT Tower , which is visible from the rear windows.
The far-fetched parts begin with the show’s premise and emphasis on a sensitive national security role for the ambassador.
Kate Wyler, a career diplomat with a history of playful assignments, is diverted to London from Kabul, Afghanistan, after a deadly attack on a British aircraft carrier. She fears she will have to throw garden parties, but instead finds herself at the beating heart of US and UK foreign policy during a Tom Clancy-level geopolitical crisis.
None of this, say diplomats, resembles the proper work of a political ambassador, especially for a close ally like Britain, when the top national security officials of both sides have the others’ mobile numbers on speed dial.
“The reality is that Jake Sullivan picks up the phone and calls his counterpart, and the ambassador hears it afterwards,” said Lewis A. Lukens, who served as deputy chief of mission under Ms. Hartley’s predecessor, Robert Wood Johnson IV.
That is not to say that British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has not cultivated friendly ties with Ms Hartley. He talked to her, over a whiskey, at the ambassador’s Christmas party at Winfield House. The State Department gave the producers of “The Diplomat” rare access to film at its large headquarters in Whitehall. Mr. Cleverly even plans to shoot a video for Netflix to promote the series.
“The show gets the informality of really good meetings in the Secretary of State’s office, minus the people dropping dead,” said Matthew Barzun, who served as ambassador during the Obama administration.
The key to staying sane, Mr Barzun said, is not to worry about attending every critical meeting. During his broadcast, he visited British high schools, talking to students about what they admired and distrusted about the United States. With her business ties, Ms Hartley said she intended to focus on apprenticeship and training programs for young Britons – to revive a project she had started in Paris.
The last ambassador whose career even remotely matches Mrs. Russell’s character is Raymond GH Seitz, who was sent to London in 1991 by President George HW Bush. A career diplomat who had served there twice before, Mr Seitz learned of his new post when he was called from a bar in Brussels after attending a NATO meeting. On the phone was the president.
“When I came in, I knew half the cabinet,” Mr. Seitz, now 82, said from his home in New Hampshire. “I came from Washington and I also knew how people thought about Europe. Besides, I was charming. Let’s not overlook that.”
Mr. Seitz was so winning that President Bill Clinton decided to detain him after he entered the White House. That meant Mr Seitz had to deal with the fallout from Mr Clinton’s decision to issue a visa to Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, a political party linked to the underground Irish Republican Army. Prime Minister John Major, a friend of Mr. Seitz, was so furious that he refused to speak to Mr. Clinton.
Last week, Mr. Biden ruffled even more feathers when he said at a Democratic fundraiser in New York City that he went to Belfast to make sure “the British haven’t messed around” with the post-Brexit trade status of Northern Ireland. Ireland. .
It wasn’t a deadly attack on a British warship, as in ‘The Diplomat’, but for Ms Hartley it was a diversion into a ‘special relationship’ she says is closely tied to Northern Ireland, as well as the war. in Ukraine and other issues.
“I’ve known him for a long time,” she said of the president. “His roots are in Ireland.” She then diplomatically added, “Biden also has English roots.”