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For Keri Russell, the perks of fame include celebrity play dates for her son River, 3.
Now that she’s shooting a show with Will Arnett, Russell’s son socializes with Arnett and his wife Amy Poehler’s older boy, Archie, almost 2. And yes, Russell makes sure every outing is a photo-op.

“We call the paparazzi ahead of time. We make sure they’re all looking really cute, obviously,” she says with a straight face.

In reality, Russell, 34, is disarmingly low-key, living in Brooklyn with her husband, carpenter Shane Deary, and River. And now she spends weekdays in Long Island on a nature preserve shooting the Fox series Running Wilde (Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT), which stars Arnett as a pampered playboy hankering after his childhood sweetheart, do-gooder Emmy (Russell). Continue reading Keri Russell returns to TV as a real ‘Wilde’ woman

After eight long years, Keri Russell is making a return to TV in the new comedy Running Wilde, opposite Will Arnett. The 34-year-old actress, who enjoyed four successful seasons on college drama Felicity, told reporters why she was ready for the switch.

Plus, why she couldn’t wait to work with Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz, and what she does to keep funnyman Will Arnett in line. Continue reading Keri Russell Takes a Stab at Comedy: ‘It’s Such a Different Ride’

Will Arnett’s character in the new Fox comedy Running Wilde is a pampered billionaire who has virtually everything a man could want.
But what Steven Wilde really craves, the love of his longtime dream girl, is the one thing he can’t have.
The radiant Emmy Kadubic, played by Keri Russell, is a selfless environmentalist and humanitarian, the polar opposite of Wilde in every way.
But fate pushed them together last week in the series premiere.
Now he has become her new cause: Emmy wants to make Wilde a better man. Meanwhile, he hopes to win her heart — or at least make her a worse woman.
It sounds like the premise of a conventional romantic comedy. But Running Wilde, airing at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, is anything but conventional. With its cluelessly extreme characters and goofy sight gags, Running Wilde has the same surreal sensibilities as Arnett’s previous comedy, Arrested Development.

We chatted with Arnett and Russell about the show:
Any truth to the rumor that Steven Wilde is a thinly veiled version of Will Arnett? Wasn’t the character renamed Steven Wilde merely because the title Running Arnett didn’t sound right?
Arnett: “Let’s just say that this show represents a side of me that I simultaneously love and hate: I hate that I didn’t grow up a billionaire’s son, because I would have loved it!”

Is there any part of Emmy, the self-righteous crusader, that exists in you as well, Keri?
Russell: “I don’t think I’m as bossy as she is. But I certainly think I know everything. At least my husband would say so. Will jokes that Shane, my husband, is an un-credited writer on the show. Shane tells him all the bad things there are to know about me and they write it in the show.”

Is it a tough balancing act to make a filthy rich, self-centered, immature character lovable?
Arnett: “It’s fun to write a despicable character and then to fight to make him loveable. That’s where I hope the magic will be in our show. And I like the idea of a guy who has been given every kind of advantage and yet he’s somehow a really good person to those around him. He’s kind of the opposite of what people might project onto him in that way.”

Does this brand of absurdist comedy reflect your sense of humor?
Arnett: “I do enjoy the surreal. It makes me laugh when the fourth wall is bent but not broken.”
Russell: “It’s so refreshing. I love it. It’s something you can watch a second and third time and notice new things and get different jokes.”

What’s up with David Cross? Was casting him as Emmy’s boyfriend a desperate ploy to entice more of the Arrested Development fans to watch this show?
Arnett: “David and I just can’t let each other go. When you have something this real, you just can’t let go.”
Russell: “I feel the same way with J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves, who created Felicity. J.J. calls me all the time to do stuff. So yes, there is an Arrested Development flavor [with Cross on board]. But he’s also here because he’s so funny. He goes above and beyond what is asked of him in the most ridiculous ways.”

What kind of relationship do you two have off camera?
Arnett: “Keri is just so demanding and ugly when it comes to being down-to-earth and beautiful. She’s tough about it, because she’s so God-darned good at it.”
Russell: “Every minute of my job, he’s humiliating me or berating me in front of the crew. But I feel like the crew is 75 percent on my side. I feel that they like me a lot more than they like him. Yeah, I’m pretty confident about that. But I tell Will every day that I have an older brother already. His name is Todd Russell. My brother makes fun of me every day of my life. I don’t need another one.”

Any truth that there’s a tiny-horse pressure group protesting the treatment of tiny horses in the first episode?
Arnett: “You heard it here first. The tiny horse revolution has begun!”

Source: http://www.star-telegram.com/

Running Wilde has one of the worst titles and best pedigrees of the new TV season. Stars Will Arnett and Keri Russell play characters that seem tailor-made for them: Arnett’s hilariously venal Steve is like a single-child version of Gob, while Russell’s Emmy is an older, screwier Felicity. Adding to the good juju: Wilde is co-created by Arrested Development‘s Mitch Hurwitz. That’s enough to send expectations skyrocketing, but the Wilde pilot was reshot considerably. The show is pretty far from perfect, but last night’s premiere was fast-paced and funny…and featured at least one character who deserves to be the Kenneth/Abed sitcom breakout of the year.
First, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way. Arnett’s character is probably a little bit too tailor-made for the actor: Arnett co-created the show and co-wrote last night’s episode, so whenever Russell’s not around, Running Wilde feels uncomfortably like The Michael Richards Show. With his Baldwin-in-a-forest-fire rasp, Arnett can deliver gag lines with deadly accuracy (“Fa’ad is gonna feel a holocaust of envy.”) But he works best in a group, or at least with a straight man to play off of.
Thank goodness for Russell. Emmy has a bit of the DNA of Jason Bateman’s Michael Bluth: she thinks she’s a moralist, but she’s really just as selfish as everyone else. You could see that in the funniest moment of the night, when Russell proclaimed how proud she was for not feeling superior to anyone: “But if I were the type of person who needed to feel superior, I would say, ‘I feel sorry for that shallow, rich guy. But good for that deep, poor girl for not judging him!’”
The best reason to watch, though, is Peter Serafinowicz, who plays Steve’s wealthy neighbor Fa’ad. When Serafinowicz pretended to be a psychiatrist, I was on the floor. “I am Doctor!” “The best, and the dumbest!” “Thank you, Dr. Magazine!”
What did you think of Running Wilde, PopWatchers? I kind of adored Stefania Owen as Emmy’s daughter Puddle, but not sure how long I can handle her cute-snarky narration. And will everything be better if David Cross keeps appearing as Emmy’s boyfriend?

Source: http://popwatch.ew.com/