David Gyasi gives authority figures a steadiness worth watching. We rate his ability to suggest someone weighing difficult choices, though The Diplomat too often asks him to supply the seriousness its writing has neglected.
Fi1m perspective
David Gyasi's Austin Dennison brings a welcome composure to The Diplomat (2023). As Foreign Secretary, he gives us someone who seems capable of thinking through a problem without making a performance of it. We believe he could do the job, which matters in a series so ready to make its British officials look foolish. We rate him here, even when the writing gives him too little room.
Supporting parts in Cloud Atlas (2012) and Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014), in which he played Romilly, brought his film breakthrough. Television then offered leading roles in Containment (2016), Troy: Fall of a City (2018) and Carnival Row (2019–2023). Science fiction, fantasy and action recur through this work, often requiring physical preparation and fight work. Those larger television parts have given him opportunities to play people with competing impulses.
For Achilles, the preparation included demanding fight choreography that Gyasi performed himself. Yet Troy: Fall of a City presents the character as a pacifist, giving him something to play beyond readiness for battle. Agreus Astrayon, the wealthy faun he plays in Carnival Row, is another character whose position complicates a simple reading of him. These choices fit his stated interest in characters who resist easy judgements about good and bad.
Our reservation about Dennison is the writing around him. Alongside Rory Kinnear's Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge, he too often becomes someone for Kate to outthink. We grew frustrated when the British side was made so easy to outmanoeuvre; the programme was wasting the credibility Gyasi brought to it. That is a complaint about the script, not a request for him to play the Foreign Secretary more loudly.
The Diplomat is worth watching for him, with a caveat about how little independence its British characters are granted. His calm is an asset, but we would not want it to become an excuse to keep casting him as the reasonable alternative. Give him more of the difficult decisions, and let the other characters adjust.
Biography
David Gyasi is a British actor. He studied drama at Middlesex University and began appearing in television and film roles from 2003.
His film credits include Cloud Atlas (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Interstellar (2014), Annihilation (2018) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). On television he has played roles in Doctor Who (2005), the lead in the miniseries Containment (2016), Agreus Astrayon in Carnival Row (2019–2023), and Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison in The Diplomat (2023–present).
