TV Finally Gets the ‘Beta Husband’ Right

This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “Succession”—season 4, episode 10. 

It used to be that TV husbands who stayed home while their wives worked were buffoons who couldn’t find their way around a diaper. More recently, they’ve improved at child-rearing, but paid the price with self-doubt and general emasculation. “The Diplomat” introduces a different kind of spouse: the power househusband.

The Netflix series, a political drama with a salting of screwball comedy, features Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler, a foreign-service veteran suddenly overshadowed by his younger wife, Kate Wyler, the newly installed ambassador to the U.K. played by Keri Russell. 

In the show, Hal doesn’t bristle at his new role so much as over-embrace it. “Hal Wyler, nice to meet you,” he says by way of introduction. “I’m the ambassador’s wife.”

Plenty of diplomats have weighed in on what the show gets right—the lingo—and what it doesn’t—the players, too good-looking. But even with its flights of fancy, the series touches on something real: the complicated dynamic between high-powered women at the top of their games and the husbands pressed into roles that support them.

In recent years, that dynamic has drawn notice. Bill Clinton was scrutinized for signs of influence over Hillary Clinton’s political career (and vice versa). Doug Emhoff, husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, traded working as an entertainment lawyer for “second gentleman” duties whose tasks include fielding questions about whether he picked out the vice-presidential china (the couple would handle such ceremonial duties together, he has said). 

Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s husband Michael Haley, who is about to be deployed to Africa with the South Carolina Army National Guard, posts his wife’s media hits on his Twitter feed and wildlife shots on his Instagram. Kevin Reynolds, the husband of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and the state’s first-ever “first gentleman,” is enough of a curiosity that a doll version of him joined a collection of Iowa first lady figurines in the state capitol. 

Television usually takes a skeptical view of marriages involving powerful women, often turning their husbands into wimpy second fiddles. In “Workin’ Moms,” a Canadian sitcom on Netflix, a spouse is bullied into saying he has failed as a caregiver, his home and family are in disarray and his manhood is “a distant memory.” The recent Netflix show “Beef” features a stay-at-home dad who can’t change a tire, tries to be more assertive on orders from his wife and is accused of maintaining a “vanilla” sex life.

“I can’t even enjoy anything vanilla since her comment,” he tells their therapist.

At times during HBO’s “Succession,” Tom Wambsgans is so scared of his wife Shiv Roy, an aspiring CEO who regularly humiliates him, that actor Matthew Macfadyen said on “The Tonight Show” that he raised his voice to a high pitch in scenes with Shiv just to show his fear. (No one knows what his voice sounds like now that he’s taken the reins of Waystar Royco.)

As gender dynamics change, marriages featuring female breadwinners are less likely to end in divorce than in years past. With the share of those marriages tripling over the last 50 years, such couples married in the 1990s were less associated with divorce risks than couples married in the late 1960s and 1970s, according to research from sociologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania.

After working on politically charged series including “The West Wing” and “Homeland,” “Diplomat” creator Debora Cahn became interested in “tandem couples,” a foreign-service term for spouses who both work in diplomacy. She noticed this type of relationship in other professions, too. Up-and-coming young women would marry older stars in their field, bonding over a shared passion for their work. Then 10 years into the marriage, the woman is reaching a career high—just as her spouse is slowing down. 

“Across the board, the men are incredibly supportive in really wanting this for their wives. And across the board they don’t necessarily know how to actualize that, because it’s not something they’ve done before–there’s not much of a model,” says Cahn. 

In “The Diplomat,” Hal is a brash former ambassador with a wealth of experience and a deep bench of highly placed contacts. While pacing the residence, he pesters Kate for updates on her day (he’s invested in her success, but also, maybe, a little bit bored). The first call Kate picks up in her new office is from Hal, who doesn’t seem to mind getting hung up on when she runs out of patience for him. 

Kate both invites his help and dreads his interference. “I need to get out,” he insists. “I need to let people know you’re here.” “No, no you don’t!” she bites back. 

Soon Hal is engineering an unsanctioned meeting between Kate and the British prime minister, breaking all kinds of protocols and forcing her to fit into his blustery style of diplomacy. She bends his meddling to her style and works it to her advantage. 

“She likes his power,” Cahn says. 

It’s a trope in television for women to be turned off by their sidelined husbands. In “The Diplomat,” the marriage is in crisis and the intimacy is more complicated. Though Hal can indulge his wandering eye and play the lovable scamp, Cahn has him declare his own brand of erectile dysfunction to take the classic definition of infidelity off the table. He’s seemingly physically unable to be with anyone other than his wife. 

“It was very important for me to portray a marriage that was having an existential struggle based on something that was not infidelity,” Cahn says. “I really liked the idea that there was an ethical, moral, professional rift—that they fundamentally approached the work in different ways.”

Viewer reactions to Hal have been mixed. 

“There are some men I have spoken to who just feel that Hal is right all the time and they can’t quite figure out what Kate’s problem is,” Cahn says. “And there are a lot of people I talk to, male and female, who say, ‘Oh my God he’s horrible. Why is she with him?!’”

Write to Ellen Gamerman at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications
The creator of “The Diplomat” is Debora Cahn. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was Deborah Cahn. (Corrected on June 4)