Turning Tales of Government in Action Into Compelling TV

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Debora Cahn, showrunner of the The Diplomat, talks about her work as attorney Neal Katyal ’91, who is writing a show about the Supreme Court, readies to chime in. Former Ambassador Erica Barks Ruggles, left, and journalist Dafna Linzer moderated the discussion. (Photo by Kata Sasvari)
9/25/2026
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How do you make great television about both the dark side and the light moments of high-level government service? 

Sounds like a tall order, but not out of reach for Debora Cahn, the creator and producer of the Netflix series The Diplomat, and formerly a writer for The West Wing. 

On Sept. 24, as part of a series of talks sponsored by the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, Cahn shared some of her own trade secrets withNeal Katyal ’91, former acting solicitor general of the United States and a Dartmouth trustee. Having argued 54 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including winning a landmark case opposing sweeping tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, Katyal is embarking on his own television project about how the justices interact, often behind closed doors.

Cahn traced her path into television screenwriting and production from her upbringing by a German-born father and a Polish mother who, during World War II, saw American soldiers as noble, courageous liberators. But, she said, her own perceptions were tested when the United States invaded Iraq. 

“So suddenly we were the bad guys, and I couldn’t understand how we had gone from being the savior of children to being the aggressors bombing a country who we really had no obvious beef with,” Cahn told the 200 people gathered in Filene Auditorium, with 450 having watched online. 

“The chasm between those two versions of the country is the thing that brings me back to telling stories about politics and telling stories about individuals who have or are close to a tremendous amount of power.”

The conversation, From State to Screen, was moderated by Dafna Linzer, former editorial director and executive vice president at U.S. News & World Report, and Erica Barks Ruggles, former U.S. ambassador to Rwanda and Obenshain Family Visitor and Diplomat in Residence at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, which co-sponsored the event, along with the Davidson Institute for Global Security, the Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth Dialogues, the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Associate Dean for the Social Sciences.

The beauty of government is, how do you structure things to try and facilitate  dialogue and disagreement?

Attribution
Neal Katyal ’91, former acting solicitor general of the United States

Aiming for accuracy and credibility, Cahn said she bases plots and characters on the gripping, real-life adventures of script consultants, including former diplomats.

“These were journalists, these were politicians, policymakers, generals, spies for this country, spies for other countries,” she said. “We would listen to their stories and listen to their experiences and that would be kind of the fertile soil for the season. And the first question was always, ‘What are you scared about that I don’t know to be scared about?’”

Katyal had his own stories to tell about a decades-long legal career that has given him a front row seat on a judicial process which can seem, to outsiders, shrouded in secrecy. That’s why, he said, he is working with actor and comedian John Mulaney to develop a television series that brings the Supreme Court out of the shadows, and also shows how dialogue and different viewpoints can be productive.

“It’s the American people’s court, and you all have a right to see it because what you’d see is—and that’s true even with this conservative court—you’d see robust disagreement and debate among nine people who’ve read everything down to the footnotes, and are coming at you hard and coming at each other hard. And to me, that’s American democracy at its best,” Katyal said. 

Katyal said he was drawn to screenwriting after watching an episode Cahn wrote for The West Wing called “The Supremes,” about two nominees whose views radically diverged. “I think that captured what is best about the court,” he told Cahn. “It was at that moment, actually, that I decided to write a TV show about the Supreme Court.”

The Diplomat, which has won 10 Emmy nominations in the first three years and last week saw Allison Janney win for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series, is also binge-worthy, Katyal said.

“So freaking good,” he told Cahn. “What your show has managed to do, and obviously there’s all sorts of chaos and drama, is capture something beautiful about our foreign service officers and what they give.” 

Both Cahn and Katyal said they want to depict and explore nuanced personal relationships that keep the wheels of government turning, for better or worse, at the highest levels. 

“In Washington, where you stand is often a function of where you sit,” Katyal said. “The beauty of government is, how do you structure things to try and facilitate dialogue and disagreement? One way you do so is you have overlapping jurisdiction between agencies. You don’t just have the State Department in charge of all foreign policy. You’ve got Defense also. And they’re supposed to clash. You want them to clash. You want that dialogue.”

The Rockefeller Center/Dartmouth Dialogues event drew 200 people to FIlene Auditorium, many of them fans of the Netflix series The Diplomat, which was created by Debora Cahn. (Photo by Kata Sasvari)

Healthy disagreement is also an important part of the creative process, Cahn said. Working for both Aaron Sorkin, on The West Wing, and Shonda Rhimes ’91, on Grey’s Anatomy, she learned how to collaborate with two vastly different kinds of creators, “giving me the tools to be able to start and pivot and weave on the job. So yes, you always want to be, whenever you can, working for people who don’t think the way that you do.” 

Katyal agreed, recalling that, before clerking for a federal judge, he worked as a summer associate for John Roberts, who was then in private practice and is now chief justice of the Supreme Court.

“I’m like a knee-jerk lefty law student,” Katyal told Roberts during their interview. “Do you really want to work with me?” 

“That’s why you’re here,” Roberts replied. “I know how I think. I need to know how other people think.”

Towards the end of the discussion, Linzer, the longtime journalist, said her advice would be, “You can trust people you don’t agree with on everything. There are ways to have really important, valuable friendships that will move far beyond whatever point of argument exists in the moment.”

And Barks Ruggles, the former ambassador, said it was important in diplomacy to listen to everyone, learn to negotiate even with enemies, and realize that “you have to be able to listen and understand what it is they are telling you they need to get to a better place.”

During the Q&A session, Brynn Garg ’29, who has a major in government and a minor in education, told the panel, “I really like what you said about celebrating dissent. And I think in this age of rampant political polarization, I’m wondering what advice you all have for how we do that?”

Cahn said she creates characters who are “ideologically aligned” yet “will fight tooth and nail over some small difference in approach” until a decision is reached. “You then need to see those people falling in line behind whatever the decision was,” she said.

Students and other community members chat with Dafna Linzer and Debora Cahn after the panel. (Photo by Kata Sasvari)

After the event, Daniel Mann ’30 said, “I was struck by Katyal’s reminder that strong convictions don’t have to erase personal respect.”

Mann also appreciated the shoutout Katyal gave for his most influential teachers at Dartmouth: the late Raymond Hall, former chair of the Department of Sociology; Douglas Haynes, professor emeritus of history, and the late Kenneth Strange, who was director of forensics and Katyal’s debate coach.

Mann said that was a highlight, “showing how transformative faculty mentorship here can be when it meets raw student idealism.”

Cassandra Feinberg ’30 liked Katyal’s advice about “really understanding multiple perspectives. I feel like sometimes we’re scared to go and talk to someone on the other side or apply for an internship with someone in office who’s of the opposite political party, but maybe that’s exactly what we should be doing,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Cahn had met with a screenwriting class taught by film and media studies professor Bill Phillips; visited with students in the Diplomacy in a Complex World course taught by Barks Ruggles; lunched with students from the Department of Film and Media Studies; and talked with senior lecturer and author Katherine Crouch and students at the Literary Arts Bridge.

The Rockefeller series continues on Oct. 6 with Strategy and Spin: the 2026 Midterms, a conversation featuring Tim Miller, Lis Smith ’05, and Sam Stein ’04.