Opinion | Netflix’s ‘The Diplomat’ is imbued by the spirit of the storied Winfield House

A house.

A marriage.

Amidst all the growing buzz for “The Diplomat” — a blast of new highbrow that feels a bit like if “The West Wing,” “House of Cards” and “Homeland” had a ménage à trois — two things stand out. At least for me. One, off the bat — and lodged deep inside the talky, bone-dry Netflix eight-parter following a newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Kate Wyler (a fantastic Keri Russell) — is the idea that, while the show is about the shadowy world of diplomacy, it is also about Kate’s equally murky dynamic with husband Hal, also a diplomat (a bang-on Rufus Sewell).

The tap dance of negotiation. The art of persuasion. Power-sharing. Boundaries. Hey, are we talking geopolitics or are we talking marital manoeuvring?

It is an idea that Russell herself sank into recently in an interview with Vogue: “The thing I’m always drawn to is the personal element, and the backdrop is just the conceit to inform the relationships.”

The actor — who, of course, became part of pop culture when she starred in one of the ultimate ’90s shows about feelings, “Felicity,” and later the personal/political masterpiece “The Americans” — went on about her new project: “To me this is a show about a couple, and about a woman trying to move from the background to a more front-facing position. And how that shifts the dynamic in a relationship where the other person in the relationship is used to being the star.”

Show creator Debora Cahn (who previously worked on both “Homeland” and “The West Wing”) was influenced by two other portraits of high-profile people in pressure-cooker situations: 1998’s “Primary Colors” (a surtext about the Clinton marriage) and the 1987 Holly Hunter classic “Broadcast News” (substitute politics for TV news; insert likewise flawed, ambitious people).

Fortunately, “The Diplomat” does not tell. It shows. Only giving us little clues into the state of the Kate-Hal marriage, at least early on, the audience has to key into the words behind words, and the silence between those words — it spreads and spreads as the episodes advance in its debut season.

Something that the show does show — and which looms as almost a character in the series — is the historic Winfield House, home to the U.S. ambassador in London since 1955. The other thing yours truly zeroed in on! Set on 12 acres of grounds in Regent’s Park — and comprising the largest private garden in central London after Buckingham Palace — it has a pretty interesting history. Not to mention, a direct connection to one of the wildest socialites of the last century: Barbara Hutton. Name-checked, too, in passing, in the show. The deal is this: she is the one who had the house built, during a stint in London, and later sold to the U.S. government. For one dollar!

And, listen: if there is one person who knew about husbands, it would be Hutton. She had seven of them, including Cary Grant. Not for nothing did the expression “Poor Little Rich Girl” arise in the lexicon and stick to her like molasses because of her varied tragedies. The Woolworth heiress who had been left a staggering inheritance of $26.1 million when she was a teenager — in the 1920s — is indeed congruous with the canard that Money Does Not Buy Happiness, given her vices and capacity for self-destruction. And, oh, all that man trouble.

Eons before Hutton had ever set sight on the land where Winfield House now sits, it was primarily forestland. Deer. Wild bulls and boars. Henry VII hunted there. Later, it became St. Dunstan’s Villa, a grand, Italianate-style residence built in 1825 for Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, the third Marquess of Hertford.

Enter Hutton, in 1936. She rechristened it after the previous house had fallen in a fire and was at that point married to a dude named Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Reventlow (that would be husband No. 2). Deciding on a red-brick, neo-Georgian feel, they commissioned architect Leonard Rome Guthrie.

“Barbara Hutton engaged two decorators: ‘Johnny’ Sieben, an expert on carpets and French furniture, who had renovated the Woolworth town houses in New York, and Sheila Lady Milbank, who consulted on furnishing, colors (sic) and fabrics,” the official site on the house reads. “Oak parquet floors were laid, 18th century French paneling installed and marble bathrooms fitted. Several thousand trees and hedges were planted, a ten-foot high steel fence erected and a modern security system installed to protect the property.”

In 1937, the Count and Hutton moved into Winfield House, named after Hutton’s grandfather, the mansion boasting a bounty of art (two Canalettos were later given to the National Gallery in Washington), Louis XV furniture, Persian carpets and Chinese objets d’art. “It may have given its chatelaine some of the happiness and security she longed for — but it was short lived,” we are further told.

In 1939, with the Second World War around the corner, and her marriage on the rocks, Barbara Hutton returned to America, soon embarking on her third spouse — yup, Grant, the iconic Hollywood leading man. Winfield House itself was commandeered and used by an RAF barrage balloon unit, its windows boarded up. German bombs damaged the roof and moisture ruined the parquet floors and, in 1944, a flying bomb exploded 40 yards from the house, killing one cadet and injuring 20 others.

As per the embassy: “A year after the war, Barbara Hutton came back to visit Winfield House. She found buckled floorboards, peeling walls, broken windows … the next day she telephoned her New York lawyer and told him she wanted to give the house to the U.S. Government to be repaired and used as the official residence of the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Her ‘most generous and patriotic offer’ was accepted in a personal letter from President Harry Truman. For the token price of an American dollar, Winfield House passed into official American ownership.”

A parade of ambassadors have lived there since, each leaving their own imprint. Over the decades, a tennis court was resurfaced and an indoor swimming pool repainted. An Indian chandelier arrived inside, and large conifer plants were brought in from Scotland. And, of course, the house has seen no shortage of personal action, too, various presidents staying at the residence when in London. George Bush met Mikhail Gorbachev there during the 1991 G7 summit, for instance. Princess Diana brought her sons, Harry and William, there, on another occasion.

And now yet more life has been gusted into it, courtesy of Netflix. Although “The Diplomat” did not shoot at Winfield House — Wrotham Park in Hertfordshire was apparently used as a stand-in — its spirit imbues it. Life imitating art imitating real estate, you might say.

That, plus: gender and work and the finer points of protocol.

Shinan Govani is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist covering culture and society. Follow him on Twitter: @shinangovani

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