‘The Diplomat’ U.K. Prime Minister on the Operatic Way He Learned of His “Shocking” Season 4 Storyline

[The following story contains spoilers from the first four episodes of The Diplomat season four, through “Pagliacci.”]

The actor, who has spent the past four seasons playing wild-card British prime minister Nicol Trowbridge, resigns midway through the Netflix political thriller’s latest season, announcing the move in a shocking moment at the end of episode four. Trowbridge steps down after an unusually surreal episode for The Diplomat , in which he imagines that former adviser Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), who dies early in season three, is still alive and chiming in on his latest actions. He also hallucinates that the U.S. officials with whom he’s meeting are laughing at and mocking him and sings an aria as he thinks of himself as both a king and a clown (donning both costumes). Related Stories Business Ari Emanuel Pitches Brother Rahm as Centrist Democratic President and Says He Isn't Too Worried About AI: "It Doesn't Have Taste" TV Patrick Brammall Is Poised to Join the Ranks of Australia's Great Exports

Despite the trippy scenes leading up to Kinnear’s final scene, which comes just one episode after viewers learn that U.K. foreign secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) has died in a helicopter crash, Diplomat showrunner Debora Cahn says there were grounded, real-life reasons for this season’s shake-up in the British government.

“By the time we got to this season, Rory had been prime minister for a period of time where the actual U.K. had like five different people at 10 Downing Street,” Cahn tells The Hollywood Reporter . “And it felt like there was this essential part of being a diplomat, which is that you’re always learning the cast of characters from scratch. You either outlast the people that you’re working with, or you’re sent to a different country. And I wanted to see our team going through the struggle of just when you think you know where the ground is under your feet, it completely changes. You’ve built all these relationships, and suddenly you have nothing.”

Cahn was also interested in showing what it would mean for Keri Russell ‘s American ambassador to the U.K. to no longer have to work with someone like Trowbridge.

“I also really wanted to play with the dynamic of like, you think you’re working with somebody who’s difficult and they’re the problem, and then they leave, and it turns out you were the problem or both of you were the problem,” she says.

Cahn gave Kinnear a heads-up that his character would be resigning at some point in season four, but the specifics around his departure didn’t emerge until the actor received an unusual request while he was boarding a flight to Lithuania.

“I got a message from Deb saying, ‘Do you think you’d be able to sing this?’ And she sent me the aria,” Kinnear recalls.