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Keri Russell gained fame playing a quintessential girl next door type on J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves’ Felicity, which perhaps makes it all the more fun to see her subvert that image in FX’s new series, The Americans. This time, Russell is playing the girl next door… who is secretly a KGB spy working to help defeat America from within in the midst of the Cold War.

Russell stars as Elizabeth Jennings, a suburbanite living with her husband, Phillip (Matthew Rhys) and their two children in 1981 Washington, D.C. But Elizabeth and Phillip are in fact deep cover KGB operatives trained since their youth to play the part of the perfect Americans, while gaining information for their Soviet superiors, in any number of ways one might associate with a spy… All while maintaining their cover as a normal, friendly family to everyone in their life, including their oblivious children.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with Russell to discuss her role on The Americans and her approach to this very intriguing character. Note that some spoilers follow for events that occur in the early scenes of The Americans pilot episode. Continue reading The Americans: Keri Russell on Life as a KGB Spy in Suburbia

The commercial web seals two year broadcast deal for Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys starrer with Fox.

LONDON — Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution has inked a deal with U.K. commercial network ITV for the broadcast rights to upcoming drama The Americans starring Golden Globe Award-winning actress Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. ITV has sealed a two-year deal for the show slated to premiere on the channel “in the coming months.”

The Americans centers on the arranged marriage of two KGB spies who pose as Americans in suburban Washington, D.C. shortly after Ronald Reagan is elected President. The couple has two children who know nothing about their parents’ true identity. Tensions also heighten upon the arrival of a new neighbor, an FBI agent working in counter intelligence.

The deal was sealed by Steve Cornish, svp and managing director, Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution and Sasha Breslau, head of acquired series for ITV.

Cornish said: “We have had a huge response to the show from international broadcasters since we launched it at MIPCOM and are delighted to have secured this two year deal with ITV.” In the U.S.,The Americans is scheduled for premiere on January 30, 2013 on FX Network.

The Americans is co-produced by Fox Television Studios and FX Productions. The series is executive produced by Joe Weisberg, who is also showrunner. Graham Yost (Justified, Boomtown), Joel Fields (Rizzoli & Isles) and Amblin Television’s Darryl Frank (Falling Skies, Smash) and Justin Falvey (Falling Skies, The Borgias) are also executive producers.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/

Keri Russell leaves ‘Felicity’ behind as a Russian double agent on ‘The Americans’

Keri Russell lies half-naked on a bed at a soundstage in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. Dressed in a black bra and stockings, her pencil skirt hiked up above her waist, she’s smiling, which is surprising given that in the past half hour, she’s been spanked on her naked rear or whipped with a belt more than 50 times.

Russell is filming the fifth episode of “The Americans,” FX’s new drama about Soviet spies in America in the early 1980s. As Elizabeth Jennings (her American name) Russell is undercover, using sex as a weapon in the soon-to-be-lost battle against capitalist oppression. This scene calls for Elizabeth’s mark, a corporate surveillance executive with a penchant for harmful sexual play, to turn unexpectedly violent.

The mechanics of the scene are tricky. After a kiss with guest-actor John Dossett, the two fall to the bed for a quick bout of fake sex. Dossett then flips Russell over, slaps her bottom twice and repeatedly whips her with a belt. Russell’s character realizes what’s happening, screams and squirms away.

In a scene of this sort, there are many details to work out. How many buttons should be undone on her peach blouse before Dossett removes it? When should Russell reach for his belt, and how long should her hands be down there? Then, when and how should he reach for the fake-leather belt which, in a true piece of showbiz magic, makes exactly the sound of a belt slashing flesh without causing Russell any pain? Continue reading Sex, spies & stoli

The new 1980s-set FX series stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as KGB agents posing as a married couple in the U.S., but here it’s the Soviets wearing the white hats.

On a bone-rattlingly cold winter morning, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are sitting in a Lincoln sedan the size of a small barge, adjusting Walkman-era fashion accouterments and whispering about the Reagan assassination attempt.

Russell and Rhys are not oddball nostalgists. The actors are shooting a scene for FX’s “The Americans,” a Cold War thriller set in the early 1980s that premieres Wednesday.

Created by former CIA officer Joseph Weisberg, the show stars Elizabeth (Russell) and Phillip (Rhys) as KGB agents who are sent to live in America, start a family and blend in as the all-American couple next door. The couple’s task is dangerous: They must feed information to the motherland while covering their tracks so that their neighbors — including a suspicious FBI agent — don’t catch wind of their Kremlin ties. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ on FX bets viewers will warm up to Cold War

FX has announced that the pilot episode of The Americans will be a feature-length 97 minutes, up from the typical 42-44 minute running time of a typical dramatic episode of television on basic cable. The first airing of the Keri Russell/Matthew Rhys KGB spy drama will conclude at 11:37 p.m., with the first encore airing from 11:37 p.m. to 1:14 a.m. and the second encore from 1:14 a.m. to 2:50 a.m. The premiere of FX’s latest drama, which will fill the time slot vacated by American Horror Story: Asylum, will be preceded by the 2010 Tom Cruise film Knight and Day.

The Americans follows married couple Phillip (Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Russell), who seem to have it all. They’re the young, happy couple that you see around town and simultaneously admire and envy, with their beautiful children and seemingly comfortable existence. However, they’re hiding something from everyone in their life, including their children – they’re agents for the KGB and involved in an arranged marriage. However, as they grow closer as a couple and Phillip begins to embrace America’s values, things get much more complicated and the two might begin to question their loyalty to a cause they once held near and dear.

The Americans also features Emmy winner Margo Martindale as Claudia, a fellow KGB agent who delivers assignments to Phillip and Elizabeth; Holly Taylor and Keidrich Sellati as their children Paige and Henry; Noah Emmerich as FBI Agent Stan Beeman, who lives next door to the Jennings family; and Maximiliano Hernández as Agent Chris Amador, Stan’s partner and a fellow member of the Counterintelligence division responsible for fighting foreign agents on American soil.

The Americans premieres Wednesday, January 30th.

Source: http://www.tvovermind.com/

“The Americans,” a new spy thriller starting Wednesday on FX, has a C.I.A. pedigree, is set in the geopolitical crucible of the cold war 1980s and stars Keri Russell playing against winsome type as a Communist hard-liner who is equally adept at seducing bureaucrats, kicking the heads of her enemies through walls or inserting a bit of propaganda into her son’s homework.

It has plenty going for it as a cloak-and-dagger series, in other words, especially in a prime-time era defined by another espionage drama, “Homeland.”

But it’s the metaphorical tension of the show’s domestic conceit — a pair of deep-cover K.G.B. agents are assigned to pose as husband and wife in the Washington suburbs — that the show’s creators hope will elevate it into something more than a pulpy diversion. The bet is that beyond the clandestine window dressing, viewers may find some deeper resonance in the story of two people thrown together by fate, who end up years later with two kids, a house in the ’burbs and a superficial marriage that they keep up for appearance’s sake. Continue reading Those Cute Spies Around the Corner ‘The Americans’ With Keri Russell as a K.G.B. Agent