Allison Janney is shy, and she has no interest in ever being president.
The first part surprises people. The second is now professionally inconvenient because Janney has spent the better part of two decades walking the corridors of a fictional Washington, D.C., and finally has taken the seat behind the Oval Office desk. In “The Diplomat,” Debora Cahn’s political thriller on Netflix, Janney’s Grace Penn has ascended from vice president to commander in chief, a turn the actor swears she did not see coming. “I didn’t know until I read the last page of a script,” Janney tells Variety. “I was sitting right here in my kitchen and turned the page and saw it, and it just freaked me out. I haven’t had that kind of reaction to a script before, ever.”
We are talking over Zoom, Janney at a desk in her home office, a pool visible behind her. Walking around her and then hopping onto her lap is Lilo, a pit bull her niece is fostering. It is a domestic scene entirely at odds with the woman she plays. I met Janney almost a decade ago at the after party for “I, Tonya,” Craig Gillespie’s 2017 biopic, following its screening at the New York Film Festival. In my early pundit days, I walked up to her and told her flat-out she was going to win an Oscar. She said, in so many words, “You’re kind, but that’s not happening.” A few months later she won the Academy Award for supporting actress as LaVona Golden, the abusive mother of figure skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie).
