Who plays Hal Wyler in Netflix’s The Diplomat?

By Louie Fecou
Published: April 24, 2023 (Last updated: 4 weeks ago)
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Our protagonist in The Diplomat is career diplomat Kate Wyler, who finds herself struggling to find a work-life balance between her new duties and her marriage. When she is given the high-profile position of US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, her life seems to drop a gear, and Kate has to rely on her instincts and skills to navigate the stormy seas ahead. A large part of the story focuses on Kate and her husband, Hal, himself being a top-tier politician that has found himself in the spotlight.

Who plays Hal Wyler in Netflix’s The Diplomat?

Hal Wyler is played by actor Rufus Sewell. Rufus Sewell was born on 29 October 1967 and is a British film, TV, and stage actor.

Jo and William John Frederick Sewell were his parents, but they divorced when he was only five. When he was at Trafalgar Junior School, he joined the drama club, where he played the lead in Rumpelstiltskin.

Rufus has been married twice but has had a rocky time with his romances.

He would marry his long-term girlfriend, Australian fashion journalist Yasmin Abdallah in 1999, but things would not work out, and they divorced a year later in 2000.

In 2004, he would try again with the scriptwriter and producer Amy Gardner. They have a son, William Douglas Sewell (born 2002), but sadly they would also part ways in 2006.

Rufus also has a daughter called Lola, who was born in 2013 to Ami Komai.

What is Rufus Sewell most known for?

Rufus Sewell has a portfolio of work that is far too long to list. He has had prolific work on stage, screen, and TV, but we have cherry-picked out some of the roles you might remember him from:

  • As far as the big screen goes, his first big feature film was in 1991, playing Bobby in the film Twenty-One.
  • In 1996, he would be cast as Fortinbras in a film version of Hamlet directed by my favorite British thespian, luvvie Kenneth Branagh.
  • In 1997, he would be John Murdoch in the hugely under-rated sci-fi mystery Dark City.
  • By 2001 he would get a part in A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger, and in 2005, he would play the wonderfully named Crown Prince Leopold in The Illusionist with Edward Norton.
  • In 2012, he would take the role of Adam in the bizarre horror fantasy adventure Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Huntercovering events in the President’s life that the Discovery Channel would omit.
  • In 2016, more fantasy was in his resume playing Urshu in Gods of Egypt.
  • More recently, you might have seen Rufus as Charles in M. Night Shyamalan’s dreary convoluted satirical island survival shocker Old.

As far as prominent TV roles go. Rufus Sewell has been working consistently since the early 1990s, proving he is a steady pair of hands that can work well in all areas:

  • Look for him in 7 episodes of 1994’s Middlemarch.
  • He would play Ali Baba in the TV mini-series Arabian Nights in 2000 before playing Agamemnon in another mini-series Helen of Troy, in 2003.
  • From 2008 to 2009, he would be in 18 episodes of Eleventh Hour as Dr. Jacob Hood.
  • More recently, you will recognize Rufus from the hit show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; he played Declan Howell and was in forty episodes of The Man in the High Castle as John Smith.

In 2020 he was in BBC flagship show The Pale Horse, and in 2023, just before The Diplomat on Netflix, he was in the mind-bending crime thriller Kaleidoscope.

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