‘And then somebody throws a piece of sh-t at you': ‘The Diplomat' star Ato Essandoh on Stuart getting honeytrapped
One of the elements of Netflix's The Diplomat that lends itself to being an addictive drama is how the show juggles huge political turmoil alongside relationship drama and often comedic complications for the core characters. Case in point, Stuart Heyford (Ato Essandoh), the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in London. Besides his duties being the right hand for U.S. ambassador Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), Stuart had a tumultuous second season.
After surviving the Season 1 finale explosion, he recovered enough to return to work and randomly met a woman (Adrienne Warren) with whom he hooked up, only to find out there was nothing random about it all. His ex-girlfriend Eidra (Ali Ahn), the CIA station chief, set it all up to ensure he was ready to come back to his job.
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Here, Essandoh tells us whether he likes to know what's coming on the hit drama, his experience meeting real-life foreign service members, and the challenges of working with crutches.
Gold Derby: Outside of the politics, is just a fun show to watch. Do you feel that from the inside?
Ato Essandoh: Yeah, I still remember reading that pilot script for the first time. I read it off of my phone because the casting director sent it to me and I hate reading things on computers and screens, but I couldn't put my phone down. It was so good.
Stuart went through it in the second season. How was a lot of that to play?
I always marvel at Debora Cahn, our show creator, and her ability to create these real people and put them in really serious circumstances and still pull out the humanity and the humor out of it. So it's one of those things where I've done enough shows where I want to read scripts and talk to the showrunner just to see what's going to happen. But with Debora, I don't want to talk to her. I just want to see what happens in the read-through when I get the script. It's always something that's really surprising.
So getting Stuart set up with a honeypot and how Eidra reveals it to him was kind of amazing. That whole thing coming from a place of "I just got really lucky and I really needed it." And then chopping my legs out right from under me.
I wanted to ask about that Episode 4 scene in particular because Stuart does go from having that next morning glow to just being shocked and furious in a matter of seconds. Plus, the interaction was recorded! What were the challenges for you in that scene?
I keep going back to the writing because the writing gives you the highs and the lows, so it's almost not challenging. It's challenging when there's nothing there to work with, but who doesn't know that feeling of literally getting up out of bed, skipping? The sun is shining, birds are singing, and then somebody throws a piece of sh-t at you. Do you know what I mean?
I just couldn't wait to get to set to try all the different takes I could have on coming from a high, high, high place and getting cut out by somebody who I really, really love and who I really, really respect, which is even worse, you know?
Did you play around with how big you should go once that reveal comes out and Stuart grows immediately furious?
A little bit because I'm always afraid of being too big because I'm naturally a big guy and I have a big voice and I don't want to be too theatrical. But how do you play that since, literally, your ex-girlfriend has just video-recorded your hookup and it's now a national secret? I think what I found was a good place of just shock and awe and absolutely being crushed on this whole thing. I hope I did it well, but people who have watched it have given me pretty good feedback, so I'm pretty happy with it.
Also, during Season 2, we see Stuart's recovery from the explosion at the end of the first season. Were there challenges working with those crutches?
Those crutches were really annoying. The first episode that I had to use them were great, but then you see that you have five more episodes. Even the little squeaky thing that they do when you use them, that just sort of got under my skin so much. Also, because of the position that I am in, I don't want it to be a big thing. I'm trying to look like I am healthy, I'm cured.
And the thing that these people [in government] do is that they live these lives and they're so human, but they have to put on this mask and nothing fazes them. Every time I see a Tony Blinken [former U.S. secretary of state] on television talking very calmly about what might be going on in Ukraine or China, I know that there's much so much going on in his head. And I know that there's a ton of people behind him scrambling like little cats.
Netflix
So it sounds like watching some of these real political figures takes on different meaning after being in the world of
Yes. Funny thing, I went to a Fourth of July party and it was filled with the foreign service. And I was talking to the person whose job I play on the show, this wonderful man named Matthew Palmer. We were just having a conversation about the show and then I think the ambassador of, let's say, Azerbaijan just walks up to him and they start talking policy. And then the ambassador looks at me and goes, "Oh, hey, aren't you in that show?" And I'm like, "yeah." And so then we just segue from Ukraine to talking about my show and then back to needing to figure out what this triad was going to be.
Was that a little gratifying that they knew you and knew the show?
It was wonderfully gratifying because we're big with the foreign service. If nobody else in the United States likes us, the foreign service really digs us, and that's a really good feeling.
Tell me about working with Ali as Eidra. She and Stuart are broken up in Season 2, but do you play that Stuart still has feelings for her? It's hard enough to be in the same room with an ex, let alone have to work with them!
That's what I play because I'm naturally a romantic and I just think Stuart loves this woman because who doesn't love somebody who's just powerful and in charge? And also it's nice, maybe from an ego standpoint, to have somebody that's so powerful who actually digs you and wants to spend time with you. He wears his heart on his sleeve in a way that I think Ali's character does not. And I think that dynamic is what is fun to love. So I play it that way, and she can just sort of shut everything off, but I know underneath that hard candy shell is a creamy nougat.
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I know some of your scenes are on stages, but then others are on location and are just so grand and stately. How is that for you?
Yeah, the offices are on a soundstage but everything that you see outside is actually real. Like, we shot at the U.S. Embassy and we shot at St. Paul's Cathedral. It's a lot of location porn, really. Like, the place that doubles as the ambassador's residence is some sort of royalty and one of the tables inside of the lobby was owned by Napoleon. And they tell us that. And I'm like, "Wait, Napoleon? That Napoleon?" And they're like, "Yeah, that Napoleon." It's the other character of the entire series.
I saw a Season 1 interview where you called Debora a mad scientist due to the show's writing. Do we see some of that mad scientist work in the Season 3 scripts?
Yeah, mad scientist was a great start for her, but now I think she's like a wicked sorceress at this point. She's gone metaphysical now. The depth of the characters are one of the things that I love because it is a character study and you wonder how far she can take these characters. You get it in Season 1, which is a lot of world-building. And then Season 2 comes off like a rocket. Of course, then it's, where are they going to go in Season 3? I really think she's got voodoo dolls and stuff like that. Like, she's gone away from science and now it's magic. I love it.
Stuart's job involves keeping a lot of secrets because he's privy to a lot of information. How are you personally at keeping secrets?
I'm pretty good. I'm actually proud of my secret-keeping ability sometimes. My girlfriend begs to differ, but I am pretty good at being a confidant. And what's interesting is that in Season 2, Stuart gets left out of all of these secrets. And that's what really gets under his skin, which is amazing. The guy just survived a bombing and I think the thing that really kills him is he's not one of the cool kids anymore and he doesn't get all these secrets. He walks into a room, they're all like, "Stuart's here',"and they walk away. So that's another little thing that Debora throws in that I love that she makes us play with.
What is one word to describe Season 3?
Emotional.
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