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Mary

It all started with a slap for Matthew Rhys. Trying out for “The Americans,” he took one in the puss from Keri Russell.

This new FX drama, whose third episode airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. EST, focuses on two KGB spies posing as an ordinary American couple shortly after Ronald Reagan became president.

As Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, they have a comfortable home in a Washington suburb, two sweet kids, a travel agency they run and, by all signs, a solid piece of the American Dream. No one would suspect that they are Russian-born plants bent on burying the United States with subterfuge and brutality.

No one, that is, unless it’s their new neighbor, FBI agent Stan Beeman (played by Noah Emmerich with an infectious mix of cunning and dorkiness), who has recently moved in with his family across the street. He represents just one among the many threats of exposure, imprisonment or death they face daily.

“It’s an incredible balancing act to portray: the domesticity of their suburban lives and the struggle of their relationship as an arranged couple, and then the extreme spy stuff,” says Rhys. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ On FX To Star Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys