Hosted by Kate McCann and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Deborah Cahn
Debora Cahn is an American television writer, producer, and showrunner. She is the creator, executive producer, and showrunner of the Netflix political thriller The Diplomat, starring Keri Russell as a newly appointed US ambassador to the UK.
She began her career on The West Wing, writing and producing from 2002 to 2006, then moved to Grey's Anatomy (2006–2013). She was a writer and executive producer on the final two seasons of Showtime's Homeland (2018–2020), and worked on Martin Scorsese's HBO series Vinyl and FX's Fosse/Verdon. She also wrote the HBO film Paterno, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Al Pacino.
She has two Writers Guild of America Awards, one for Fosse/Verdon in Best Adapted Long Form Television. The Diplomat has brought her nominations from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, WGA, and PGA in the drama series categories.
She graduated from Barnard College and holds a master's in acting from Harvard's Institute for Advanced Theater Training.
Episode Summary
Debora Cahn, the writer behind The Diplomat, Homeland, The West Wing, and Grey's Anatomy, joins Kate McCann and Sir Richard Dearlove to talk about writing political drama in an era when reality keeps outpacing fiction. Debora explains how "spy camp" research trips with real diplomats, spies, and generals shape her scripts, why she resists making her stories too close to current events, and what she learned about the strange double life of foreign service officers: the loneliness of constant relocation, the jockeying for a seat in the room, and the quiet patriotism that keeps them showing up. Sir Richard, a former head of MI6, adds his own view from the other side of the table, including a story about deliberately keeping a British ambassador out of the room in Washington.
In this episode:
00:00 Cold Open
02:58 Russia Story Rewritten
04:11 Borgen Inspiration
06:15 Spy Camp Research
08:22 Diplomacy In The Dirt
09:35 Ambassadors Real And Fake
18:39 CIA And Embassy Dynamics
21:24 From West Wing To Diplomat
23:14 No Evil Characters
24:29 MI6 Reality Check
29:59 Demystifying Government Work
31:12 Female President Choice
33:51 Future Of Ambassadors
Hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove (former MI6 Chief) and Kate McCann (Political Editor at Times Radio).
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Transcript
COLD OPEN
[00:00] CAHN: What happens if the people on the other side who are pointing guns at you are good guys? Like, that's complicated.
[00:07] DEARLOVE: Generally I object to stuff like James Bond because it's so far removed from reality.
[00:13] MCCANN: Do you ever find yourself rewriting something because you are worried it is too close to what is happening?
INTRODUCTION
[00:18] MCCANN: Hello. I'm your co-host, Kate McCann, and welcome to a special bonus episode of One Decision. Today we're turning our attention to Hollywood to discuss how diplomacy and espionage is shown on screen. It's particularly top of mind as the Emmys are today, September the 14th. My co-host and former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, and I had a riveting discussion about how espionage is shown on screen with none other than Debora Cahn. Debora spent over two decades writing some of television's most politically charged dramas — The West Wing, Homeland. Now she is creator and showrunner of The Diplomat on Netflix. And this show has been nominated for ten Emmys, including the coveted Outstanding Drama Series.
Debora has built her career by sitting down, talking with CIA analysts, ambassadors, and those who work in jobs that we will never get to see or know. She gets to the bottom of what makes the whole world of politics and diplomacy tick. And naturally, Sir Richard and I had a lot to discuss with her, particularly how espionage looks when it's on TV and film. Without further ado, let's get into our discussion with Debora Cahn. Debora Cahn, welcome to One Decision. It's great to have you with us. And our listeners will know you have been involved with some of the most amazing political — not just political, but political kind of TV hits of recent years. You must sometimes wonder — I mean, the truth is stranger than fiction.
TRUTH IS LAPPING US EVERY DAY
[01:32] CAHN: Thank you. It's great to be here.
[01:50] CAHN: Truth is just epically lapping us every single day. There's no way that we can do a political story right now that is reflective of what's going on in the real world, because what's going on in the real world feels so exaggerated and cartoonish. It feels like some sort of Marvel movie that we're watching play out. So we're not going for that, and we're spending a lot of time trying to figure out how closely should we skate to what's happening so that it feels relevant to the universe that we live in. But we certainly in our country have a government right now that feels kind of outlandish and cartoonish, and that isn't what we're looking to put in the show.
REWRITING FOR REALITY — THE RUSSIA PROBLEM
[02:40] MCCANN: Focusing on The Diplomat, there are huge themes which it draws from, which all of us will know in our daily lives. Do you ever find yourself rewriting something, toning it down, changing direction, because you are worried that it is too close to what is happening in reality?
[02:59] CAHN: We don't change things that are too close. We only change things if we are suddenly radically out of date. For example, in the very first season, you know, we speak to a lot of people who know this stuff really well. So, Richard, I'm surprised we haven't interviewed you already, frankly, and hopefully we will. But we're talking about doing a Russia story and we talked to a Russia expert named Heather Conley — fantastic, still at the forefront of the field. And she talked to us about how difficult diplomacy can be with Russia, how difficult conflict resolution can be, because at the time that we spoke to her, Russia was in this period of conducting most of its foreign affairs through covert operations. So how do you negotiate the end of a conflict with somebody who doesn't admit to having been in conflict with you? That I just found to be a delightful paradigm. And we wrote a bunch of episodes about that. And then Putin invaded Ukraine. He turned overt and we had to throw out a lot of material.
THE BORGEN CONNECTION
[04:12] DEARLOVE: When I started watching the series of The Diplomat, which I must say was fascinating, the program it actually reminded me of was the Danish program Borgen. Were you sort of inspired to an extent by Borgen? Because I wouldn't say they're the same, but there is a sort of generic inspiration, if you wish. I'd love to know your comments on that.
[04:37] CAHN: Absolutely, 100 percent. I definitely watched Borgen. There was a time when there were companies in the US that were considering making an American version of Borgen, and I was involved in that conversation, so I certainly did some thinking about it. There's a moment in Borgen where I can't remember the name of the actress, but she is newly prime minister. She has young children. Her children come to visit her in her office. They sit on the couch. She's on the phone having a very important conversation. And the older child, who's a girl, says, Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. And she says, Wait, just wait one minute. I have to finish this call. And she finishes the call. She hangs up the phone and she learns that her older child was trying to tell her that her younger child was peeing on the couch. And it was, I thought, one of the most poignant, so relatable, incredibly clear collisions of both personal life and professional life — being a career mother, and the mother part intersecting with the professional part. The thing that we like to look at a lot in The Diplomat, which is when your raw humanity manages to invade really manicured, precise, image-driven spaces.
RESEARCH — SPY CAMP AND THE INSPIRATION FOR THE DIPLOMAT
[06:07] MCCANN: I mean, that is very much the political world, very much the world that we all inhabit and work within. You mentioned before wanting to interview Sir Richard. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you do the background research? Because there's something called Spy Camp, I believe. Can you tell our listeners about what Spy Camp is?
[06:28] CAHN: So when I was working on Homeland — a fantastic show that I had the privilege of working on for its last two years — they would do something called Spy Camp every year at the beginning of a new season. They would go to Washington, DC for a week with the writers, and we would sit and listen to this incredible lineup of policymakers, generals from the military, journalists, and spies from the United States and from Russia and from all over the place. And in one of those conversations, in marched this woman named Beth Jones, who had been an ambassador for many, many years. And she started talking, and five minutes later I was like, I have a new television show and it's her. She was talking about her day. She was talking about the kind of work that she regularly did. And it sounded like a superhero movie to me. We used to call her the superhero in a pantsuit. We find as many people as we can who have had direct experience with the kind of stories that we're telling and talk to them a little bit about their life — what was their worst day, what was their best day, what are the kind of moments that they don't see depicted. So, Richard, a lot of what you've done is lovingly portrayed again and again and again in film and television, and we're looking for the kind of surprising moments — perhaps not the most adrenaline-fueled, but the most unexpected moments of those experiences.
WHAT THE RESEARCH TAUGHT HER
[08:11] DEARLOVE: Yes. And what kinds of things did you get from that? What was the thing that you came away from those meetings with thinking, yeah, I really would not have come up with that without these people?
[08:23] CAHN: I think there's a pragmatism to the work that particularly the Foreign Service officers that I was speaking to did, because we think about it, we read about it in terms of policy, in terms of the minutiae of international law and the law of armed conflict. And the fact of the matter is so much of what they're doing is in collision with real down-and-dirty practicalities. You know, if you are in a war zone and you are attempting to get to the meeting — if the bombs are dropping, do you go or do you not go? The notion of the danger of getting to a meeting is something that would come up again and again and again. And driving becomes a big focus. Are you carrying snacks becomes a big focus. How do people go from a situation where their basic means are not being met to where they are prepared to negotiate about the fate of their country and the fate of millions of people, kind of all in the same moment.
POLITICAL APPOINTEES VS. CAREER DIPLOMATS
[09:36] DEARLOVE: Debora, in the real world, as opposed to the one that you're creating, which is close in some respects — one of the issues that fascinated me is, let's be fair, many US ambassadors are appointed for their political connections and the support that they've given to whoever is elected president. And some of them really, let's be polite, are somewhat, as we say in the UK, out to lunch. What you're writing about is this highly professional, sort of intensely focused ambassador who is intimately involved in many crises. And I was sort of casting my mind back. The only career diplomat I can recall who was American ambassador in London was a friend of mine called Ray Seitz. Who was a professional diplomat and in that role incredibly influential and a very admirable figure. But others have largely had to focus just on the social side, and it's the deputy head of mission who does the heavy diplomatic lifting. Maybe I can just be a little bit naughty here and put in an anecdote. When I was actually commuting to DC when I was head of MI6 — and of course this is around the time after 9/11, in the build-up to the Iraq War and later the invasion of Afghanistan — I was pretty much under instruction to make sure that the then British ambassador, I can tell you this because he's deceased, poor chap, and my condolences to his wife, to make sure he didn't attend any of the consequential meetings. So we spent an awful lot of time maneuvering in DC to make sure we went to the White House or Langley or the Pentagon or wherever on our own. So there is a sort of obverse to what you're writing about, which is appointees who aren't necessarily out of their depth — some of them are — but they don't have, let's say, the political clout or the nous to deal with whatever crisis you're facing. I mean, I'd be interested in your comments on that.
[12:13] CAHN: Sure. I mean, we're definitely portraying a, you know, made-for-TV slightly unlikely set of circumstances, which is somebody who's had a lot of experience in the Middle East and has done this for a really long time gets appointed in London. That is, as you said, Ray Seitz is the only career person who's ever held that post. But we did want to look at the kind of work that a career ambassador would do in crisis situations, and so gave ourselves some crises that she could face. But there's an interesting conflict that exists even for career people, which is every three years you're moving to a new place where you don't necessarily have the connections you had before. You don't have the staff that you had before. You're not in the country that you had before. You may not know anything about customs and local lore. And you are settling into a relationship with those who are working for you and also those you're reporting to, who are also constantly rotating. One of the things that I find most moving about career Foreign Service officers is that they work for every administration. They work for Democrats, they work for Republicans. And they manage to function — some more successfully and some less successfully — in administrations that align with their ideological positions and in those who don't.
And I think there's always a sort of jockeying for trying to have influence — trying to be in the room. As you're talking about, is the ambassador in the room, or is the meeting actually happening down the hall where two people have snuck out so that they don't have to have the meeting in front of the ambassador? There's that jockey for position, which then also has the other side, which is you have a relationship with the president and so you get heard. Well, do you? I mean, there are a lot of countries, and even if you did give millions of dollars to the president's inaugural committee and did get that position because you're a close personal friend, it's still hard to get the ear. It's still hard to get attention paid to your corner of the world. We're always interested in looking at those places where there's a really big schism between what somebody in the Foreign Service knows based on the fact that they have a small area of expertise, which is one country, and how that's reflected back and utilized or not in Washington, which is negotiating American relationships with hundreds of countries.
ARE DIPLOMATS ACTUALLY LIKABLE?
[14:56] MCCANN: Did you feel when you were meeting these people, did you like them? Because when you talk there about, you know, the tensions and the constant one-upmanship and am I in the room, am I not, do I have the ear or do I not, am I going to be moved — there is a feeling there of the type of person who would want to live that lifestyle is probably a certain type of person. And they may be quite difficult, they may be quite ambitious, they may be able to compartmentalize in a way that other people can't. I just wonder whether that makes them likable or approachable or warm or normal.
[15:31] CAHN: I think to succeed in that world, you've got to be pretty likable, because your job is to plop yourself down in a new country and make a lot of friends really quickly and to develop relationships quickly and to build trust really quickly. So I think the people who are not good at that don't then do it again. We certainly see it with some — as Sir Richard, you were saying, there are plenty of political ambassadors who don't have that skill, and therefore they only do the job until the president they gave a lot of money to is gone, and then they're not asked to return.
There is a patriotism in the people who do this kind of work that's in a way much purer than you see in Washington and in the halls of government, because these are people who are going out and in a way selling democracy, or democratic ideals, or at least American democratic ideals, to countries all over the world. And so they are much more in touch with kind of fundamental principles of how our country is ideally run, and spend a lot more time thinking about how to share that, how to communicate it, how to live those values. We are in a crisis moment right now on a lot of different fronts. And one of them is, I think, for a lot of people who are doing this job — are you selling something that no longer exists back home? How do you continue to work for the kind of ideals and values that your own government perhaps can no longer —
ON THE CIA-DIPLOMAT RELATIONSHIP
[17:14] DEARLOVE: Debora, I endorse what you say about the commitment of diplomats to representing their country and their values in a way that is actually quite difficult in many countries and jurisdictions. And I don't think people necessarily understand. They think they lead some luxurious life, but you know, living, let's say, in a suburb of Lagos is no joke. And the sheer difficulty of day-to-day life in some of these places — I lived behind the Iron Curtain for four years, and you know, it was actually quite difficult to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and meat, and there are all sorts of things that just people don't get. Where I was in Prague during the Cold War, which was a wonderful city in which to live, but it was an extremely difficult life.
[17:59] CAHN: Where were you?
[18:09] DEARLOVE: For example, when I left, a lot of building work was done on the house in which I had lived. And I think I can't remember how many microphones were dug out of the walls, including the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen. And I don't think people understand. Being under constant surveillance, being harassed, is just part of the day-to-day existence. And you just get used to it, but it's a very strange way to live in certain circumstances.
But what actually now professionally interests me a lot is of course the relationship between intelligence and espionage and diplomacy, and how that actually functions and happens inside a modern embassy. Because the two didn't separate — or intelligence didn't become institutionalized — until historically quite late, like in the early 20th century, late 19th century. So there wasn't really a separation conceptually. And that's why when you read a lot of these old novels, you know, spying and diplomacy seem to go hand in hand. But actually they have been separated by the modern nation state. And I was fascinated in watching the episodes of The Diplomat that I did see — you've got a rather sassy lady who's the CIA head of station, and the ambassador. And that interplay between the two — how much insight have you managed, let's say, in Spy Camp, to obtain into how that's worked out in practice?
[19:52] CAHN: That relationship came from Spy Camp, where we watched a CIA head of station and an ambassador who had worked together in the same country talk about the ways that they collaborated and the ways that they did not. Diplomats in the US are very keen to clarify that they don't work for the CIA. And that is absolutely the case. But there is certainly a lot of crossover in what they're interested in doing, and if they can share information, they're both playing on the same field and can feed each other's missions in ways that we hope can be helpful and not kind of at cross purposes. We hate seeing different arms of the US government arguing with each other around the world. We certainly see it a lot, but ideally that's not what's happening. And there's a subset of people — like you were saying, Kate, there's a certain kind of person who wants to go live this life, who wants to move to a different country every three years and have a different post and start over, and if you have a family, move them around the world with you. The people who are willing to do that for the CIA and the people who are willing to do that for the State Department certainly share some characteristics. And it's a small bunch of people who rotate through a small number of capitals, and there's got to be a lot of overlap.
WEST WING VS. THE DIPLOMAT — OPTIMISM THEN AND NOW
[21:24] MCCANN: Can I ask you about how you found the changes in this world over the time that you've been writing? Because The West Wing — I love The West Wing and I was obsessed with it when I was at university. But for me, it felt optimistic. It felt hopeful in a way. It felt like something you would watch and think, yeah, I really would like to do that. And The Diplomat feels different. Is that about the difference in the time period we're in? Or is that about the difference in the people that are in this world now?
[22:02] CAHN: In the later seasons of The West Wing, we felt the show was too idealistic and slightly unrealistically so. And in the last couple of seasons, we made an effort to address that. But I think part of the magic of the show was that it was optimistic and it was idealistic about something that we had all grown used to thinking is venal and corrupt.
The experience that I had working on The West Wing and also working on Homeland — talking to people, the kind of people who were doing the work that we were writing about across the board, whether or not I agreed with them, whether or not I shared their Democrat, Republican, whether we shared values or not — they always struck me as people who were putting their money where their mouth was. They were living their beliefs. They were trying to do a lot of good for a lot of people they don't know. So that I found to be incredibly moving and is a big piece of why I wanted to write this show.
I try to be idealistic in a kind of a different way, which is: we go out of our way on The Diplomat not to write evil characters. We write characters who can be oppositional or who are at odds with our characters, but we go out of our way to then kind of take them and find a way to get behind the curtain and into the thinking that brings them to what they're doing. Because, one, stories about corrupt politicians and evil spy masters — that ground is already well covered in film and television. There's something that's sort of a cop-out about letting yourself say, well, it's just because they're all bad guys. Like, what happens if they're good guys? What happens if the people on the other side who are pointing guns at you are good guys who are smart and have decent values and are kind to children? Like —
[24:15] CAHN: What if you're in the middle of a bloodbath with those people? That's complicated. The notion that there's some sort of basic moral flaw with your opponent, I think is a cop-out that we don't want to make.
WRITING WITHOUT VILLAINS
[24:29] MCCANN: Well, I wanted to ask because Debora just made me think — you were talking a little bit about predictable characters. So Richard, when you watch things that have very strong echoes of the life that you used to lead, is there anything that you see on screen where you think, no, no, no, no, no, no, nope, not real, can't do it, turn it off?
[24:48] DEARLOVE: To admit, from time to time, yes. Because, you know, to make —
[24:53] CAHN: It must happen all the time.
[24:56] DEARLOVE: Well, to make television interesting, to entertain — whether the entertainment is lighthearted or cerebral — you've got to pack your story. You've got to create intensity, you've got to create action, movement. And things happen, you know, very fast in short time frames. And I find that the sort of compression of reality sometimes quite hard to take, because it doesn't necessarily in real life happen in quite that way. And actually I enjoyed the authenticity of The Diplomat. And of course I'm highly familiar with the residence in London. I've been there many times. And it it actually is always incredibly realistic. The character I loved was the English lady who's the sort of Queen Bee who runs the ambassadorial residence. That is such a recognizable character — sort of officious, terrifyingly officious. And there were bits and pieces that immediately resonated with me.
THE 'SHOE TEST' — GETTING IT WRONG ON PURPOSE
[26:10] CAHN: It warms my heart to hear you say that. The yardstick we have is I don't want someone like you to throw a shoe at the television. So we ask our consultants. We have American diplomats, we have British diplomats, we have a former CIA officer — they read the scripts and they tell us what's wrong, what's just factually incorrect, what's weird, what sounds kind of off. And there's another category, which is please let me know if you would throw your shoe at the television if you heard that. And there are certainly things that we do that we know are not accurate. But my feeling is I want to know that I'm getting it wrong and I want to make the choice to get it wrong, which many times I will, in deference to the story, like you're saying, Sir Richard. But we want to be aware of the mistake we're making and make sure that we're doing it for a reason that's necessary.
[27:16] DEARLOVE: Actually, I found The Diplomat easier to watch and accept than many espionage or spy thrillers, which always have an element of exaggeration and absurdity in them. And I thought you cleverly stayed on the right side of reality, even though let's face it you still have to intensify the pace of the story and pack it into a short time frame. It's fascinating to see these things played out when you've lived these situations so frequently. Generally I object to stuff like James Bond because it's so far removed from reality, and I'm much more in sympathy with this more cerebral political approach.
[27:47] CAHN: Glad to hear that.
ESPIONAGE ON SCREEN — DEARLOVE'S VERDICT
[28:11] DEARLOVE: Where you get this interplay of characters. What I very much enjoyed in The Diplomat was when she hadn't presented her credentials. She's not officially ambassador. And there's all this tension about can she speak to the Foreign Secretary? Can she speak to the Prime Minister? And she's got a jealous Secretary of State in Washington who is deeply suspicious of her being too pally. That was the other thing I wanted to comment on — there are actually very few ambassadors who end up, let's say, having a close relationship with the president or the prime minister, because it's just not physically possible. People don't understand that. But there are exceptions to the rule. And the one that springs to my mind, which I have to mention — it's historical, but you'll be amused by it — was that the British ambassador in Moscow towards the end of World War II was somebody called Sir Archibald Kerr, who had a phenomenally close relationship with Stalin. And Stalin really liked him and invited him around for drinks. And the two guys used to get drunk together. He was a sort of confidant. But what's interesting — as a reward, in 1946, he was sent to Washington as ambassador. And the British government had to withdraw him because he couldn't cope with a non-war situation where no one in Washington liked him. But anyway, I thought that was a nice story to sort of juxtapose with — and he would actually make a rather good series, an Archibald historical one, which would be very amusing.
[29:57] CAHN: We will develop that up next. One of the things that The West Wing did very elegantly was it gave you a look behind the scenes — what does it mean to work in government? What does your day-to-day ordinary Tuesday look like? And I think that was very powerful for a lot of people, demystifying the inside of the process. And there is, in fact, a whole generation of people who decided to go work for the American government after watching The West Wing. And we're certainly trying to do a little bit of that. And I think there's something that's reassuring for people who watch the show and don't have anything other than an image of, you know, a diplomat holding a martini glass at some sort of elegant soiree — to see that taking this piece of paper and delivering it to the right person at the Foreign Office and then having to go get it stamped and all of that, I think personalizes it in a way that hopefully makes it all seem a little bit less mysterious and a little bit more accessible.
THE FEMALE PRESIDENT
[31:13] MCCANN: Debora, you have a female president. Can I ask — I mean, America obviously never has had one. Was that a conscious choice on your part? What made you make that decision?
[31:25] CAHN: Mixed feelings about it, because I think it's hugely consequential that we've never had one in the United States. There's a certain amount you can plan with your story, and then there's a certain amount where you kind of create this ship and it starts sailing and you can steer it a little bit, but the weather's going to do what the weather does. So we had an opportunity to bring in Allison Janney, who's, you know, one of the best actresses who's ever lived. And it was important to give her something consequential to do. And we had talked very early on, in the very first episode, about this problematic vice president character who was involved in kind of kicking off the action of the pilot. So it was like this little seed that had been planted that was ready to turn into something more in what ended up being the end of the second season. So we decided to go ahead and bring in the vice president. And once it was clear that she was such a great match for the rest of our cast and for the role, we just wanted her to have a bigger job.
LETTERS FROM DIPLOMATS
[32:42] MCCANN: Have you ever had any letters from people, senior politicians or diplomats, compliments, criticisms? Have you ever had anybody get in touch with you?
[32:52] CAHN: We've talked to a lot of diplomats since the show came out, and we definitely get both praise and constructive criticism. I think the most moving for me was a 30-year-old Ecuadorian diplomat who said, my parents finally understand what I do for a living. There are a lot of American diplomats who were really upset that in the very first episode we depicted her flying on a private plane, which American diplomats do not do, not ever. But for the most part, we feel pretty good about having enough feedback from people who do this, who are telling us that there are enough elements that feel authentic, that they feel like it's a show that they can watch. So that's what we're happy about. Again, no shoes, no throwing shoes.
THE FUTURE OF DIPLOMACY
[33:52] DEARLOVE: Debora, one aspect of modern diplomacy is the way that speed of communication, convenience of air travel, has sort of undermined the position. Because let's face it, the role of ambassador plenipotentiary is a 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th century creation. You know, when it took three months for a ship to sail to a distant part of the world, the ambassador was representing his country and had to take decisions which couldn't be based on communication. Now, you see this all the time, with someone like Witkoff flying in to negotiate on the president's behalf as personal representative — that makes life for ambassadors in many countries extremely difficult because they are being disregarded, they're being overridden, they're being shortcut by speed of communication. I suppose my question is, looking ahead, you can almost see a world where you just have offices which have diplomatic status, but the ambassador doesn't really count for very much.
[35:04] CAHN: Well, some would say we're already there. You know, the State Department is a very different place than it was a few years ago. It's a very different place than it was 13 months ago. The State Department is going through what we hope will, ten years down the road, look like a healthy evolution, but right now it just looks like a lot of death of departments that did a lot of good in the world, and the firing of a lot of people who had a lot of expertise that they carefully cultivated over years and relationships that they built over long careers. So there is a role for somebody like Steve Witkoff to kind of parachute into any conflict and do his best to take over. But he managed to pull off something unexpected and positive in Gaza and then was not quite able to pull the same rabbit out of a hat in Ukraine. And the thing that interests me in writing about people who are involved in politics and writing about people who work for the government is there are a handful of individuals who have a lot of power. But there are also hundreds of thousands of other people who work for the government. And their moves are not as big and they don't show up on the front page of the newspaper. But a tremendous amount of what's actually happening day to day is in the hands of a lot of people whose jobs we don't understand and whose titles we don't recognize and who we would never notice if we passed them on the street. And the stories about the very small kinds of things that they can do to kind of just move the needle forward slightly, or hold the line as democracy is retreating slightly — that is what I'm looking to talk about in the show.
CLOSING
[37:06] MCCANN: Debora, it has been an absolute delight to speak to you today. It's been a really fascinating conversation. Really interesting to understand how you get into the sort of mindsets of the people that you are portraying. And I can tell it's almost a bit of a responsibility there, with writing something like this. So thank you so much for giving us your time.
[37:09] CAHN: This was fun.
[37:26] CAHN: Thank you. It's great, great talking to both of you. Thank you so much.
[37:30] DEARLOVE: And I'm up for an interview if you want.
[37:33] CAHN: Good.
POST-INTERVIEW DISCUSSION
[37:37] MCCANN: Well, Richard, I found that conversation really fascinating. I felt like Debora — she really cared about portraying the people who work behind the scenes in a way that was authentic. What was your take?
[37:49] DEARLOVE: Yeah, well she hasn't just sat down and decided to write a series. There's a whole hinterland, which is quite clear from what she said, of very detailed research. And getting under the skin of diplomacy, getting inside embassy life, understanding how it's conducted, understanding the intricacies — I think is probably very difficult for someone who hasn't had the direct experience. And I must say I'm really impressed. Because they obviously take the role very seriously. I thought one of the fascinating things that she mentioned, not necessarily in relation to The Diplomat, but in relation to The West Wing, was that they had influenced people to watch the series and then go and work for the US government. And that's a pretty extraordinary claim for what's essentially the role of a scriptwriter. And I think it shows her seriousness and it shows her commitment and her determination to produce something which is both entertaining, but at the same time isn't necessarily 100% authentic, but it has enough authenticity to make it credible and understandable. And I think striking that balance is pretty amazing, which is probably why she is such a successful scriptwriter in this particular genre. Impressed, very impressed indeed.
[39:20] MCCANN: Yeah, I have to say, I genuinely am a huge fan of The West Wing and actually also Grey's Anatomy, which she also had a hand in writing, although we didn't really talk about it today. The West Wing made me want to work in politics. And that was at a time when I was doing my degree, at university, and it really made me think, God, this looks like a world I want to be involved in. So I'm not surprised that there were lots of people who also felt the same way. I found her answer on having a female president and the sort of complexities around that really interesting. She clearly felt that she wanted to explore, but also that she wants it to be as true to the reality and how things actually are as possible — which you said — although Sir Richard, it did make me laugh when you said everything is too sped up in TV dramas.
[40:09] DEARLOVE: Why does that make you laugh?
[40:13] MCCANN: Well, because — I know exactly why you said it — they go from having a sort of bad meeting to almost launching a nuclear missile in the space of, you know, five hours. And obviously that's not how life works. But it made me think of my mum, who used to be a midwife, and every time she sees a baby being born on a medical drama, she can't help herself but say, that's not a newborn baby. It doesn't come out like that.
[40:37] DEARLOVE: Yeah, well I fear that's the sort of curse of being professional in certain specific areas, and you sort of automatically object. I know lots of doctors and surgeons who will not watch medical and surgical TV series. I'm not quite as adamant as that, but I do find some of the stuff professionally which I see in relation to my former career makes me wince.
But the one I do like — well, for example, although it is an exaggeration and quite an extreme one, when you have strong characterization, as you do in Slow Horses, which I'm sure you have watched — the espionage thriller series — it's the personalities and the amusement generated by the personalities that balance the whole thing out and make it watchable.
[41:34] MCCANN: Yeah, quite. Well, it was a fascinating conversation. We hope that you enjoyed it too. And that is it for this episode of One Decision. And we've got plenty more conversations just like this one with big thinkers, policymakers, and those who work behind the scenes. You can check them out on onedecision.com, our YouTube page, and of course wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate McCann, and I was joined today by Sir Richard Dearlove. Thank you very much for listening.
