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

This new FX drama, which airs 10 p.m. Wednesdays, fo-cuses on two KGB spies posing as an ordinary American couple shortly after Ronald Reag-an 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 they are Russian-born plants bent on burying the United States with subterfuge and brutality.

No one, that is, except 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 Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Russian spies in the ‘burbs

In the new FX drama “The Americans,” Keri Russell plays the role of Elizabeth Jennings, a knockout K.G.B. spy living in America in the early 1980s. With the recent announcement of the show’s second season and a new movie in theaters now (“Dark Skies”), Russell’s one busy lady, but not too busy to chat with T about her new job, closet workouts and newfound love of mascara. Continue reading Face Time | Keri Russell