Filed in Appearances

The Americans at the Paley Fest

The Americans

Friday, October 4, 2013
6:30 pm ET
New York

In Person

Joe Weisberg
Joel Fields
Keri Russell
Matthew Rhys
Noah Emmerich
Moderator: Matt Zoller Seitz, TV Critic, NYMag.com

Even in the age of the conflicted hero, FX’s The Americans is impressively bold: the series stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as—get this—a pair of undercover Soviet agents, clandestinely plying their trade while posing as travel agents in suburban Washington, D.C., during the Reagan eighties. Recipient of the Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding New Program, The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg—himself a former CIA agent. The series crackles with all the suspense inherent in the genre, but as fellow executive producer/showrunner Joel Fields says, “The Americans is at its core a marriage story; international relations is just an allegory for human relations.” Elizabeth and Philip navigate not only their own marriage—arranged by the KGB—but also relationships with their two young children, based completely on lies since neither of them knows anything about their parents’ true identities. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Philip constantly sneak out in service of the motherland, committing acts so treacherous that we, as viewers, are confronted with “TV’s deepest moral dilemma since The Sopranos,” as the St. Louis Post Dispatch sees it. Complicating matters even further: FBI Agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), ostensibly the good guy, who just so happens to be the Jennings’s next-door neighbor, is engaging in questionable behavior of his own—possibly about to get much worse.

Source: http://www.paleycenter.org

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Filed in Articles & Interviews

‘Austenland’ features unlikely pair, unlikely film

It may not seem like your typical rom-com duo: Keri Russell, known as a clandestine Russian spy in FX’s retro thriller “The Americans,” and Bret McKenzie of New Zealand’s comic-music duo, “Flight of the Conchords.” Put them both in regency costumes in a faux British amusement park devoted to Jane Austen fanatics, and things are bound to get a little freaky.

That’s the premise of the new film “Austenland,” directed by Jerusha Hess, the co-screenwriter of “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Gentlemen Broncos.” Based on the book by Shannon Hale, Russell plays a plain Jane unable to sustain a relationship while absorbed in her time-warp fantasies of romance and ruffles in Jane Austen books.

Her home is a shrine to Colin Firth’s portrayal of the dashing Mr. Darcy from the BBC production of “Pride and Prejudice,” complete with life-size cut-outs of the actor in costume and pillows and throws emblazoned with “I (heart) Darcy” symbols. She blows her life savings on a full-emersion experience at a British resort devoted to role-playing Austen where male actors are hired to fulfill guests’ romantic fantasies.

“It started with a lot of giggling about British men in britches,” says Hess, who co-wrote the screenplay with Hale and makes her directing debut. “I wanted to do something different and this is unashamedly a girl’s movie.” Continue reading ‘Austenland’ features unlikely pair, unlikely film

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