Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell talks nerves, fame, and The Diplomat

Rufus Sewell may seem to perfectly personify calm and confident characters in the acting world, but he admits he still struggles with public speaking.

“There’s nothing more terrifying,” he tells Sky News. “I remember having to do a reading at a church when I was very young and I was so nervous. I was at drama school, so people knew I wanted to be an actor, and as I was walking up towards the lectern I heard someone say, ‘this will be good’, and I completely froze.”

After portraying Prince Andrew in Scoop, which told the story of the royal’s infamous Newsnight interview in 2019, the British actor can now be seen on screen playing political superstar Hal Wyler in the second series of The Diplomat.

Despite his ability to inhabit his characters, both real and fictional, the “idea of speaking as myself” he says has always been “a horror”.

Even playing confident characters is nerve-wracking, he says, as it creates an internal battle between himself and the role. “I naturally, if left to my own devices, become very, very self-conscious, so I have to find ways to trick myself out of it.”

In The Diplomat, Sewell’s character is the estranged ex-husband of Kate Wyler, the US ambassador to the UK, played by Keri Russell.

She spends the first season navigating political minefields trying to prevent a war before it happens, after a British aircraft carrier is blown up off the coast of Iran.

The series ended on a cliffhanger that saw Hal and other political figures involved in a car explosion in London, and season two picks up following the threads of evidence left in the aftermath.

Russell credits the show’s creator, Deborah Cahn, with making the series such a thriller.

“That is the gold of our show, 100%,” she says. “She has this uncanny ability to portray political intrigue and the world of diplomacy, but also has this innate understanding of what makes people human and all the idiosyncratic weird things that make people normal.

“Even though they’re in this really seemingly powerful position, they still have bad days and are cranky, or get mad when their food is the wrong thing, or when they have to wear something they don’t like, and they still deal with all the embarrassments of daily life.”

Season two of The Diplomat out now on Netflix