It’s not often that actors get to work together so closely on two different political TV shows nearly 30 years apart. It’s even rarer that those actors each get handed a storyline in which their character knocks on death’s door after an assassination attempt… enter Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford.
**Spoiler alert for The Diplomat Season 4, now streaming on Netflix**
In the new season of Netflix’s Emmy-nominated drama, Janney’s character, President Grace Penn, is leaving Windsor Castle alongside her husband, Todd Penn (Whitford), and others when a sniper shoots her in the abdomen, causing a mass panic and triggering a series of unfortunate events that play out throughout the season. Some viewers may be experiencing deja vu as an assassination attempt feels all too similar for fans of The West Wing — the long-running NBC drama where Janney and Whitford first met decades ago — which included a storyline in which Whitford’s character, Josh Lyman, takes a bullet to the stomach along with President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen). So, how does it feel to relive history from a different angle? It’s certainly something Whitford never thought he would see.
“No, I know, we’re both in jeopardy,” Whitford tells DECIDER with a laugh, “Allison and I, we were talking yesterday, we realized, yeah, we both got shot.” For the actor, it harkened back to his West Wing days and a feeling that overwhelmed him when his own character was the one on the operating table. “First thing, when you’re an actor on a show and you get shot, you really wonder if you still have a job,” he says.
This time around, however, he has to play the role that Janney — who played White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg — played during the shooting arc on The West Wing, a.k.a. the supportive waiting room loved one who has nothing to do but sit and stand by for updates on the victim’s condition. While each has its own set of unique challenges, Whitford explains that he found it much more difficult to play the victim, but that the domino effect of his wife’s shooting in The Diplomat has greater overall implications for the series.
“It’s definitely harder to, you know, to go through that ache,” Whitford shares, adding, “I think there’s a similar thing going on, concern from Todd about her, about, ‘Are you dealing?’ Now I’m comparing what Josh went through [laughs]. But have you processed this trauma? Are you dealing? Has your judgment been distorted in response to not only your sudden rise to the presidency, but this extraordinary trauma?’”
As the season goes on, the situation only gets messier as Grace refuses the help that she so clearly needs, driving Todd thousands of miles away to London in an effort to stay out of her way. And while the psychological impact of his character’s shooting in The West Wing unfolded for a long period, the delicate balance of his Diplomat character’s mental state and the state of his marriage yielded some heavy and thought-provoking questions about how a situation like this would be handled in real life.
“It’s an even more complicated question because I am saying to a woman, ‘Are you sure you’re not reacting emotionally to this?’ And So that’s a really interesting question,” the actor explains. “When Ronald Reagan got shot, everybody was just like terrified for him and then it was all about his grit and bravery, and it brought up for me questions of how would we deal with that in terms of gender issues? I mean, she’s certainly aware of it, like, ‘You’re saying my judgment is distorted here,’ even though I think Todd has genuine reason to worry about it being distorted as she makes these very scary geopolitical decisions.”
These are the questions and concerns that build up throughout the season, resulting in the action-packed finale which sees Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), Vice President Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), White House Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah), and Secretary of State Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval) walking out of the G7 Summit in protest of Grace’s actions. But for a second, there’s a moment where it seems like Todd could walk out with them; did his character ever consider it? Whitford says it isn’t out of the question.
“I think he’s thinking about it, but I think it’s an impossible step for him to take,” the actor shares. “I can tell you, we read that episode and we were like, ‘Oh my God.’”
The Diplomat and The West Wing are both streaming on Netflix.
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