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3 days ago
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It Starts On The Page: Read ‘The Diplomat' Season 2 Finale Script 'Dreadnought' With Foreword By Debora Cahn
Editor's note: Deadline's It Starts on the Page (Drama) features standout drama series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention. The Diplomat creator Debora Cahn loves a cliffhanger. After leaving multiple major characters' fates up in the air at the end of the first season of the Netflix thriller, Cahn throws another huge wrench into international relations between the U.S. and the UK by the end of Season 2. More from Deadline Keri Russell & Allison Janney Talk Going Head-To-Head As Female Power Players In 'The Diplomat' Season 2 & Tease What's To Come After That Finale Twist 'Ginny & Georgia' Season 3 Soundtrack: From Remi Wolf To Sofi Tukker 2025 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming The breakneck six-episode season picks up right where things left off in Season 1, plunging viewers into the panic that broke out after a car bomb exploded in the heart of London, killing Parliament member Merritt Grove and leaving Kate's (Keri Russell) husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) as well as her deputy chief of mission Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) severely injured. Kate and British Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) have just started to think they might have solved the mystery surrounding the bombing of a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. But, as they soon learn, the truth is far more complicated than they could have ever imagined, and their quest only becomes more thorny with the arrival of U.S. Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Written by Cahn and directed by Alex Graves, the Season 2 finale, titled 'Dreadnought,' does provide both the audience and the characters with the answers they are desperately seeking. But at what cost? A pretty steep one, that's for sure. Russell earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as the ambassador to the UK, and Season 2 has already racked up a few major nomination including a DGA Awards nod for Graves and Golden Globes recognition for Russell and Janney. Here is the script for 'Dreadnought' with an intro by Cahn, in which she describes how she tried to do a 'non-sh*tty' version of the idea for the big 'Hal kills the President' finale plot twist that may have sounded 'stupid' and 'problematic' at first, and the one line in the script that reassured her that they have pulled it off. Every idea, when it first drops, sounds stupid. Maybe not every, but a lot of them, and 'Hal kills the President' sounded particularly Vice President has done a very bad thing. Hal, believing his wife Kate would be a better vice president anyway, tells the President about the bad thing and the President drops was problematic on a number of levels. One, our fictional president was a white male of a certain age, who bore a passing resemblance to Joe Biden, who was, when we were writing the story, running for a second term. Our season was slated to drop four days before the election. Suggesting that a white male president of a certain age hears a piece of bad news and drops dead in the Oval seemed if it didn't rhyme with the real election, President clutches chest and expires behind Resolute Desk sounded lame. But it was the finale, and anything finale-worthy was likely to sound lame in its baldest form, so I found myself saying, 'Yes, but we'll do the not-shitty version,' like that was some sort of literary device I'd learned from a close reading of not-shitty version required underplaying pretty much everything. We didn't want to see it happen, we just wanted to see Hal telling Kate. We didn't want to see Hal freak out. We wanted to see him caught in some kind of administrative snaggle – he needs to call his wife, he needs his cell phone, but he's in the CIA station and they don't allow cell phones in the station, so somebody's getting their assistant to call Kate's assistant and he finally erupts – slams his hand on the glass wall and says, 'Get my wife on the phone.'It seemed important that the eruption be both vocal and physical. We'd delayed it and contained it and this would be the only place where the magnitude of the situation was visible. I try not to write a lot of stage directions so that when they appear they make an impact. I even used all caps, which I also try to avoid. SLAMS. When we were filming the scene, I asked our director, Alex Graves, if it felt like a SLAM or just a slam because I really wanted it to be a SLAM, and Alex pointed out that if Rufus Sewell hit the glass any harder it would shatter, and perhaps we could make the slam a SLAM in then there was Hal's delivery of the news. Hal struggles to find the words, and lands on, 'He got really upset.'That's when I decided it would be okay. Which is what happens. An idea sounds implausible or trite and you spend a lot of time trying to build it out and ground it and support it with a great deal of research and nuance and complexity, but ultimately you have to fall in love with some piece of it, and for me it was that line, describing the cardiac death of a president.'He got really upset.' Debora Cahn Here is the script: Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 'Stick' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The Apple TV+ Golf Series 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
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24-05-2025
- Entertainment
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It Starts On The Page (Drama): Read ‘Paradise' Episode 1 Script 'Wildcat Is Down' With Foreword By Dan Fogelman
Editor's note: Deadline's It Starts on the Page (Drama) features 10 standout drama series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention. In his follow-up to his acclaimed NBC family drama This Is Us, Dan Fogelman switched genres — and mixed genres, too — with Hulu's Paradise, a political thriller that incorporates elements of apocalyptic science fiction. It marked Fogelman's first series creation for streaming where he already had a hit with Hulu's Only Murders in the Building, which he executive produces. More from Deadline 'Paradise' Renewed For Second Season By Hulu 'Paradise' Star Sterling K. Brown Teases 'Exploration Of The World Outside The Bunker' In Season 2 – Contenders TV Jessica Simpson On Working With Kim Kardashian On 'All's Fair': "She Did All The Lawyer Talk, I Did All The Whining" It also reunited Fogelman and his Emmy-winning This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown, who headlines Paradise as Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins. Season 1's official logline sets up the pilot episode, 'Wildcat Is Down,' written by Fogelman and directed by his frequent collaborators Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who also helmed the This Is Us pilot: Paradise takes place in a serene community inhabited by some of the world's most prominent individuals. But this tranquility explodes when a shocking murder occurs, and a high-stakes investigation unfolds. In addition to setting up the series, in its final seconds, the premiere serves the first of Paradise's many jaw-dropping twists. Here is the script for 'Wildcat is Down' with an intro by Fogelman. In it, he reveals how a kernel of an idea he got more a decade ago from a loud construction noise during his drive home from a business meeting with a powerful Hollywood type led to Paradise. About a year after This Is Us ended, I started feeling the familiar itch to get off my ass and write something new for television. I mused on multiple ideas but kept returning to a specific kernel of a notion – a notion I'd had over a decade backstory: As a much younger writer I once found myself in a general meeting with a powerful player in our industry – a person of great reach, resource, and wealth. As I chatted with him (or her, I'll never tell) I was struck by the design (and size) of their office, the seemingly infinite reach of their rolodex and power. While that person talked to me, my mind wandered and I started wondering if I was in the room with my first ever billionaire.I started musing how many people worked to make that person's life run smoothly.I was young(er), I was nervous, I don't remember what we talked on the drive home, a large crane at a nearby construction site dropped something. There was a loud BOOM. I jumped, then realized this wasn't a mass casualty event… simply a loud everyday construction I thought about the person I'd just met with – this person of seemingly unearthly wealth and power. I thought of all the people who worked to serve that person and I wondered: 'If the sh*t ever hit the fan for real, wouldn't those people all run to their own people? Wouldn't they abandon the person they are employed to serve?I started thinking of the interplay of those in power and those who serve them. I started imagining someone whose job it was to literally take a bullet for a person in immense power – a secret service agent to a President. I started thinking about billionaires, and the strange power their wealth provides, and I started wondering… what if the loud BOOM I'd heard had been real. And what if people with immense power knew it was coming, and had the time to gather their resources and plan for it… so that when it happened, they wouldn't be left in the lurch like the rest of us.I started imagining a pilot with a late surprise – one that revealed that the Presidential murder mystery the audience thought they were watching, was really something then I sat on the idea for over a fast forward ten or so years, I was getting that post This Is Us writing itch, and I returned to idea. I wrote the screenplay first, refusing to acknowledge even to myself that I was clearly writing the lead agent role for Sterling K. Brown, and refusing to commit to it as a TV series until I sat with my producing partner Jess Rosenthal and my two friends (and eventual senior writer/producers) John Hoberg and Scott Weinger to chat with experts and figure out what exactly this series was beyond the I had that, we shared it with our supportive partners at 20th, Disney, and Hulu — and then my old pals Sterling K. Brown, John Requa, Glenn Ficarra, and Steve Beers — and we were off to the races… shooting an idea that I'd been thinking about for over a decade… an idea born out of a meeting with a rich guy (or gal) and one hell of a loud boom. Dan Fogelman Read the script below. Best of Deadline Every 'The Voice' Winner Since Season 1, Including 9 Team Blake Champions Everything We Know About 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' So Far 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
