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00:00Writing two roles that are both juicy and delicious in one scene is not so difficult.
00:07Writing four in one scene is a lot.
00:09It is.
00:10It's a lot, and wanting to make it kind of equally substantive for everybody in the room is a thing.
00:24Hey, we are the team from The Diplomat.
00:27And we're here to discuss the backstory behind one of our favorite scenes.
00:34I came from theater and love theater and am always just looking for opportunities to be doing theater in a
00:43television show.
00:44And it's not an easy thing to do.
00:46Most scenes on TV shows are two pages, three pages, maybe a page and a half.
00:51So to put four characters in a room for nine pages is not common.
00:57I mean, you'd live for writing like this.
01:00It was like a scene out of, you know, Virginia Woolf.
01:02Yeah, exactly.
01:04For me, too, when I read it, I just, it felt very much like a play.
01:07And I thought this is going to be so much fun to act with Carrie and Rufus and Brad.
01:12And the fact that this is the first time you're seeing these couples as outside of their environment, outside of
01:17their, you know, political operativeness.
01:21You know, we're human beings here.
01:23Terribly awkward human beings in complicated relationships without the sort of armor of our roles.
01:33They have a fucking tone poem to the bivalve.
01:36They don't need them.
01:37No, no, no, we, we do.
01:38Oh, they look great.
01:39I'm just giving my drink a second.
01:42Is that?
01:44Oh, you bled on them.
01:46Really?
01:47Todd.
01:47No, it's probably cocktail sauce.
01:49It is not.
01:50Oh, shit, sorry.
01:51Could you check them, please?
01:52I'm the kind of actor, when I'm off camera, I'm going to eat the oyster.
01:56Were they good?
01:56Were they blue points?
01:57What were they?
01:57Malapax?
01:58Or what are they called?
01:59Yeah, I had all the names down.
02:01But I did in my life once get a bad oyster, which haunts me every time I eat an oyster.
02:06Oh, God, I know how you would be able to eat one ever again after having a...
02:09I don't judge all oysters.
02:12You know, he's not a full-on method actor, but there are certain things that, like, he's definitely eating all
02:17the oysters and wasn't going to, like, spit them out after.
02:20Get your hands away.
02:22You know what?
02:22We won't eat the ice.
02:23Your guests are afraid you're going to give them hepatitis.
02:25No.
02:26No, we don't.
02:27I don't have hepatitis.
02:28You know what?
02:28I'm going to try one.
02:29I want it on my gravestone, you know, I don't have hepatitis.
02:34His deadpan delivery of that is just so funny.
02:37It's in the background, but it's just, yeah, I don't have hepatitis.
02:39My favorite thing is writing that combines the most serious and the silliest in the same scene.
02:50Me too.
02:51Yeah.
02:51Serious and silly.
02:52It was the comedy of it.
02:54And that's not to say that it was the seriousness served the jokes or vice versa, but they were interconnected
03:01and part of the same thing, that what is funny about this scene is only what is real about it.
03:07And, and only in relation to the amount of tension and the stakes and how high it is and the
03:13human behavior.
03:15Don't touch them, please.
03:17Please.
03:18They can make a new bag.
03:19It's really not necessary.
03:21It won't take a minute.
03:24Pardon me.
03:29The sound of them shlooping into the garbage was such an important thing.
03:34The amount of money that got shlooped into that garbage.
03:37Like there are so many oysters on that tray.
03:41Like the waste.
03:43The waste.
03:43Please.
03:44And he keeps talking earlier in the episode about how Grace hates waste.
03:50Yeah.
03:50You do this thing when Allison comes in the room where you're like literally trying to figure out which way
03:56to turn and like darting away.
04:00I was like, in that moment, I was like, oh, wow.
04:03Kate is the child of an alcoholic.
04:05Totally.
04:06Right.
04:06You're like, I got to make, okay, um, oh, you need a lot of help, but you're, okay, mm-hmm,
04:11mm-hmm, sure, yeah, we'll be fine, we'll be fine.
04:13Totally.
04:14With this writing specifically, is that quite often people come up and say, are you improvising a lot of that?
04:20And the answer is no, not one syllable.
04:23What I've learned with Deb's writing is that if I think there's a kind of a misstep in the writing,
04:30it's always because I haven't examined it fully enough.
04:34And I'm a big believer now after many years of, if you think there's a problem in the line or
04:41in the scene, it's often the key to the scene.
04:46The tyranny of a great take can mount intention as you think, oh, my God, this is a long take.
04:52Everyone's in it.
04:53You can feel your voice constricting as soon as the thought occurs to you that you might be the one
04:58to screw this one up, you know.
04:59But there's a looseness that can come sometimes where, you know, if you mess up a line and just say
05:05it again, that actually sometimes the scrappy takes contain some of the best moments.
05:12One of my favorite prop moments is with the pretzel bag, because I dump the pretzels and then I have
05:17the bag.
05:17I'm not going to go back to the kitchen.
05:19I'm going to ball it up.
05:20And I thought of something I think I've seen my mother do.
05:23I think she's done that or something.
05:24And it came to me and I was like, I'm going to just shove it behind the pillow and sit
05:27down.
05:28And we haven't fun yet?
05:30Like, are we having fun?
05:34She's the president of the United States, but she's also a person with an empty pretzel bag in her hand.
05:38And it's the empty pretzel bag in the hand and the dramatic contrast between that and the position and the
05:47uniform and the status as perceived.
05:49That's where the show lives.
05:51It's one of those brilliant touches in the hall of fame of prop work.
05:59It was fun.
06:00And it came from life.
06:02Yeah, life.
06:03You know, there was a law in the books at some point, maybe early 18th century, that you were not
06:07permitted to serve oysters to prisoners in prison more than twice a week.
06:11Really?
06:12Or the prisoners would mutiny.
06:14Why? Because the oysters wouldn't cape?
06:17No.
06:17They were not a delicacy.
06:18They were so damn plentiful, it was punishment.
06:22Lobsters.
06:24Not oysters.
06:26Really?
06:28Yep.
06:31I think there's something fun with a character like Todd because, like the audience, he's like an outsider to this,
06:40to the intricacies of this.
06:42And there's something about somebody who is not as skilled politically or, you know, in terms of negotiations of just
06:52walking in and going, this is nuts.
06:55It is the people who are just, like, two inches removed with perspective, watching something that actually know what's going
07:03on.
07:04Everyone else is in the emergency.
07:06And he's the one going, equally as smart, equally as powerful in his own way.
07:11But he's the one going, but this is what's going on, right?
07:14Or is anyone going to admit it?
07:16And it is really funny the way it's written.
07:18And I think you guys and your team write so well, it is funny, it is hilarious, but it is
07:26grounded in something.
07:28And that's why it's good.
07:29That's why, you know.
07:30One of the things that the scene is doing in the episode and in the series is it's the moment
07:38when Kate realizes she can use him as a tool because she's in this environment and she can no longer
07:46be that person, right?
07:47She keeps getting kicked out.
07:49So she figures out that she can kind of puppet marionette him into taking on that role.
07:59And this is the moment where she sees that that's a possibility.
08:03Yeah.
08:03She didn't answer the question.
08:05Note.
08:06Neither did either of you.
08:08What was the question, Todd?
08:10How was your day at the office?
08:12Babe.
08:12I like to take the temperature of the room.
08:16Maybe what I heard was inaccurate.
08:17She's been known to catastrophize.
08:21Today was not a catastrophe.
08:23I didn't say it was.
08:24I may have said it was a whopper.
08:26A whopper.
08:27But manageable.
08:27Yeah.
08:28I mean, it is a brilliant writing trick to make it as awkward between us as it is.
08:37I am doing everything she doesn't want me to do.
08:42And then it turns out I'm doing it because I love her and I am extremely protective.
08:47Of her.
08:48That's the cross currents in all the writing in this show.
08:53But it's really extreme in this scene or what, you know, makes it really kind of saying anything.
09:00Sometimes in those scenes specifically, it's not the people who are talking.
09:06It's watching one of the group register that or think it's totally untrue or not know what to say.
09:15Every single person is equally playing an important part of it.
09:20So you think today was...
09:22Cat-a-fucking-strophic.
09:23I really want you to stop.
09:24I really want to know what the second lady and ambassador to the court of the lunatic in question thinks
09:31of the three-part plan.
09:32What's the third part?
09:34Her impeachment.
09:34Okay.
09:35Am I wrong?
09:35It's a two-part plan.
09:37A three.
09:37I clocked this time watching it that all of the great moments for each of the four of you are
09:45not when you're speaking.
09:46The musicality of that scene is so important.
09:49Like the quickness, the slowing down, the everyone watching.
09:52It's really about like the symphony of all of those voices and the timing and the sound is really specific
10:03in that scene to me.
10:04Gary Levy, who cut that scene, cut the episode, is a fantastic editor and has such an incredible sense of
10:12like horribly awkward comedy.
10:15Like he understands it and is happy to sit in it.
10:19Yes.
10:20Yes.
10:20Ambassador Weiler, is the logical chain of events that unfolds from parts one and two of the not three-part
10:27plan my wife's impeachment?
10:32Probably.
10:39Not many things are tied up with a neat little bow.
10:42Things continue to, you know, iterate out.
10:45And it's certainly the case for season four that there's even more of that and it gets even more complex.
10:49The oyster scene, in a way, was the proving ground for what then became a real spine for season four,
10:59which is how are these couples relating to each other and dealing with the same set of circumstances very differently?
11:07It's such a fun, delicious little scene.
11:11This, as if you think that the 1300 ministers.
11:13I'm sure there's theтории of this.
11:17Appreciate it.