Rory Kinnear’s Nicol Trowbridge quits as British prime minister midway through the fourth season of Netflix’s “The Diplomat,” and the show’s creator says real-world politics forced the exit. Trowbridge announces his resignation at the end of the fourth episode, telling a stunned room he spoke with the King an hour earlier and that the monarch accepted it. The episode itself is the oddest the series has aired. Trowbridge hallucinates his late adviser Margaret Roylin, played by Celia Imrie, who dies in season three, and she haunts him through costumes, visions and an aria.
The collapse follows a chain of blows. Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison, played by David Gyasi, dies off-screen in a helicopter crash in Amritsar, India. Kate Wyler, played by Keri Russell, then holds a recording of Trowbridge attacking Roylin. She tells the new foreign secretary, Robyn Palmer, that Roylin helped plan the strike on HMS Courageous that killed 41 sailors, and that Trowbridge tried to kill her when he found out. Jodie Whittaker’s Bethan Vaughn takes over as prime minister.
Showrunner Debora Cahn says the decision tracked the headlines. Her crew filmed in Britain on and off for roughly three years, during which the country went through five prime ministers. Trowbridge, she says, lasted an unrealistically long time. She also describes him as a leader who proved unfit for the job. Cahn adds that she would have kept both Kinnear and Gyasi “forever.”
Kinnear says the show never gives a concrete reason for Trowbridge’s resignation, leaving viewers to weigh the blackmail, the grief and the strain. He expresses sadness at leaving his colleagues and says he would return as a guest. “I’d be fascinated to see where Trowbridge does end up,” he says, noting that retired politicians find many roles and this one would not stay quiet. Co-star Rufus Sewell, who plays Hal Wyler, calls the twin shocks of Dennison’s death and the resignation “tremendously shocking.”
