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Tonight, FX premieres The Americans (10 p.m. ET), starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as a pair of Russian spies posing as married travel agents living in suburban Virginia in the year 1981.

The Cold War-era series presents an interesting challenge for costume designer Jenny Gering, who joined the show after the pilot episode (where we see Russell wearing a pair of Guess mom jeans).

“Yes, we want to create a sense of place and time and feel like we’re there, but we don’t want to have crazy clichés running around that will take you out of the story,” Gering says. Something that helps: This is the transitional early ’80s. “It’s a completely opposite silhouette to what people consider to be ‘the ’80s.’ In most people’s heads, it’s big and boxy on top and slim on the bottom, and the ’70s are more slim on top and fuller on the bottom. It was just a chance to really show women’s figures and beautiful tailoring. Everything’s very tactual — there’s a lot of leather and suede. And the palette is lovely — there’s very little black and grey, it’s very autumnal.” Continue reading ‘The Americans’ costume designer on Keri Russell’s and Matthew Rhys’ cool Cold War style

FX’s latest drama, “The Americans” (premieres tonight, Wed., Jan. 30 at 10 p.m. EST), stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, Cold War-era Russian spies who have lived, worked and raised a family in America for 15 years as part of a covert mission to gather intel on the Reagan administration’s plans against the Soviet Union.

The Jennings’ lives are further complicated by the defection of another K.G.B. operative, which could jeopardize every undercover agent’s identity; Phillip’s growing affection for American culture; and the unnervingly curious FBI agent (Noah Emmerich), who has just become their neighbor.

HuffPost TV sat down with Russell and Rhys at the recent Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour to find out more about what motivates their compelling characters, whether Elizabeth and Phillip’s marriage is really just a cover story, why Russell said yes to “The Americans” (since she said, “I always say no to everything”), what “honey trapping” is and much more. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ Premiere: Keri Russell And Matthew Rhys Talk Sex, Spy Games And America Vs. Russia

‘I love the idea of this suburban mom giving some dude a blow job in a hotel room and then packing school lunches’

Now that Abu Nazir is dead and Nicholas Brody is wandering around Quebec at least until September, viewers need some new duplicitous characters to shake up our TV dramas, preferably ones operating on U.S. soil. The Americans, a Homeland-meets-The Wonder Years thriller premiering Wednesday at 10 p.m. on FX, gives us Elizabeth Jennings, mom, homemaker – and KGB spy. A resolute Soviet officer living in 1981 Washington, D.C., Elizabeth has so successfully infiltrated Beltway suburbia with her impeccable accent and way around a brownie pan, even her FBI agent neighbor has no idea he’s sleeping one door down from the enemy.

Keri Russell, making a triumphant return to television after a string of successful film credits (Waitress, Mission: Impossible III and the upcoming Austenland, which recently premiered at Sundance), so deftly embodies the ruthless, ice-cold Elizabeth that from her first scene you’ll be going, “Felicity who?” Russell checked in with us recently from Brooklyn, where The Americans is filmed (“We’re about to start episode six”), to chat about going from coed to comrade. Continue reading Q&A: ‘The Americans’ Star Keri Russell on Playing the Spy Next Door

The great hair-chopping fiasco of 1999 has not been easy for Keri Russell to overcome. But you won’t be thinking about Felicity or her worst decision ever when you see Russell in deadly mode in FX’s tense Cold War drama The Americans (premiering tonight at nine). She and Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters) play sleeper KGB agents who’ve been posing as happily married couple Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings for the past fifteen years in suburban Washington D.C. We first meet Elizabeth mid-mission, giving head to a man from whom she needs information. (Deadly and racy!) It’s a bummer for Phillip, who’s fallen in love with both America and his wife. Vulture sat down with Russell to find out if these two crazy Russian kids can make it without being killed, and also talked Running Wilde (her short-lived Fox comedy with Will Arnett) and the eighties. Continue reading Keri Russell on Her Spy Drama The Americans, Will Arnett’s Mania, and TV Blow Jobs

On FX’s The Americans, which begins Wednesday, Keri Russell plays a Soviet sleeper agent in 1980s suburban D.C. Jace Lacob talks with the former Felicity star about Russian spies, secret lives, and being a mom.

In the opening scene of The Americans, Joe Weisberg’s tense new 1980s spy drama, Soviet sleeper agent Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) flirts with a middle-aged stranger in a Washington, D.C., bar.

Donning a blond Pretty Woman-style wig and a short dress, Russell is nearly unrecognizable, convincingly transformed into a barfly who pretends to be turned on by a G-man’s security clearance. Elizabeth and her mark head to a hotel room, where she proceeds to seduce him in order to elicit top-secret information, engaging in a range of sexual contact that’s all recorded and later listened to by Elizabeth’s husband, Phillip (Matthew Rhys).

In other words, this is the anti-Felicity.

“Oh, yeah, blow jobs and push-up bras and wigs,” says Russell, laughing. “It’s certainly a far cry.” Continue reading Keri Russell On ‘The Americans,’ Sleeper Agents, Motherhood & More