Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Diplomat’ begins with a crisis that leads Kate Wyler to be immediately assigned to the UK as an ambassador. Soon, however, she discovers that her assignment has much more to do with the things going on at home. While UK’s Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge blames foreign forces like Iran and Russia behind the blast on HMS Courageous, Kate discovers that the post of Vice President in the US is also the point of contention. Currently, the post is occupied by Grace Penn, but it may not be so for long. While Penn remains in the background in the first season, she takes center stage in the second season, especially in its second half. Presenting a powerful and complicated character like her required the creators of the show to draw upon real-life politicians who have been in Penn’s shoes.
The Fictional Grace Penn is Roughly Modelled on Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton
Deborah Cahn, the writer and creator of ‘The Diplomat,’ was loosely inspired by current VP Kamala Harris to write the character of Allison Janney’s Grace Penn. Cahn revealed that while she didn’t explicitly base Grace on Harris, she did have the 2024 Presidential candidate in mind while working on the second season of the Netflix series. She thought about “how the smartest and most experienced and most capable women wind up shuttled out the side door,” which was part of what she wanted to showcase with Grace’s character, especially with the difficult situation that her character is dealing with during the events of the first and second season.
While Harris had a clear influence on the character, Cahn revealed that the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris dynamic that appears between President William Rayburn and VP Grace Penn in the show was entirely unintentional. Cahn revealed that while working on the first season of the show, she did build the story around a similar equation, hoping to feed off of real-life circumstances but eventually keeping things fictional. But then, the way things turned out in real life, especially with Biden sidestepping to let Harris take center stage in the Presidential elections, it seemed that the show had borrowed that dynamic more heavily than implied. To this, Cahn said that it was entirely unexpected to see all of that happen in real life and that when they wrote the show, they’d expected to be “in the same neighborhood, not the same house.”
When Allison Janney was brought on board to play Penn, she brought her own twist to the character. Reportedly, she showed up on set with a steely blonde bob, which wasn’t mentioned in Grace’s description. The actress’s choice was welcomed and accepted by Cahn and the rest of the crew of ‘The Diplomat,’ and she based it on a former Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. When Janney read the character of Grace, she saw similarities with Clinton. She described Clinton as “incredibly smart, polarising, respected, admired, and hated,” which is also how she saw Penn and her actions in the show. Janney also noted that Clinton’s lack of warmth and a bit of unfriendly demeanor in her campaign may have worked against her, and this is what she also saw in Grace’s character, which she later brought to life.
Considering all this, it is clear that the writer and the actor tried to bring a touch of realism to Grace Penn, even though they referred to significantly different people for it. At the end of the day, however, Grace Penn remains a person of her own, with all of her flaws and strengths rooted in fiction and her actions bearing no reflection to that of the women who only superficially influenced her character and position in the story.
Read More: The Diplomat Season 2 Ending, Explained: Does Grace Penn Become the President?
