A crucial agent crumbles under emotional distress and threatens to topple a valuable network of KGB informants. Professionally, Philip and Elizabeth are tasked with infiltrating the FBI’s new communications encryption system while personally they are forced to grapple with one of the darker aspects of life as a spy.
WALTER SCOTT ASKS … Keri Russell
The actress, 36, stars as an undercover KGB spy in the 1980s-set drama The Americans (FX, Wednesdays).
You play a spy in the days before the Internet and mobile phones. Could you survive a week without technology?
Definitely! I’m never on my cell phone. I don’t even know why I have one. It’s been fun to go back to this period of time. The actors who play my kids had never seen a rotary phone before!
You’ve taken breaks throughout your career. Why has that been important to you?
I like working hard, but my life outside of my career is equally important to me. Maybe I’m not ambitious enough, but I’m just as interested in my friends and my relationship with my family.
What has been the best change in your life since becoming a mother? [Russell and her husband, Shane Deary, are parents to son River, 5, and daughter Willa, 1.]
You instantly become less selfish. You can’t be the biggest person in the world anymore—they are. It really grounds you.
How do you like to spend your free time?
With my girlfriends, adult beverages, and delicious food!
Online Extra: The star discusses the impact of her hit series Felicity.
It was a really sweet, heartfelt show and it’s funny because the creators were both men in their thirties when they wrote it. I think what people really related to was that time in your life when everything is possible. College is such a monumental time when your path in life is being decided, and it can go so many different ways, and every relationship you’re forming can affect that and I think the show just really captured that.
Source: http://www.parade.com/
Wednesday’s premiere of FX’s espionage thriller The Americans attracted 3.22 million total viewers and 1.57 million adults 18-49, besting the debuts of American Horror Story in the former category and Sons of Anarchy in the latter.
When you factor in the two encore telecasts that followed the premiere, the show drew combined 4.7 million viewers and 2.54 million adults 18-49 for the night.
“We’re very happy with premiere ratings for The Americans and, just as importantly, we’re proud of the widespread critical acclaim the show has received,” said FX president John Landgraf. “We have no doubt that when we get the Live+7 time-shifted ratings from last night, The Americans will rank among the best series debuts ever on FX.”
Source: http://tvline.com/
So how long did it take you to buy into the premise of The Americans, the new FX show that premiered on Wednesday night? I’m honestly not sure I still accept — that is, can watch without an occasional snort of disbelief — Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as suburban parents/KGB agents, and I’ve seen more than one episode of the thing. But, for sure, I want to keep watching, because this series will either turn into something very special, or descend into the sort of muted, dignified camp that characterizes some would-be classy cable fare.
Russell and Rhys portray Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, Russians who’ve successfully embedded themselves as sleeper agents in a suburb of Washington, D.C. It’s 1981, President Ronald Reagan has declared the USSR an “evil empire,” and one of the Jennings’ two kids needs a training bra and wants her ears pierced. As Reagan’s reelection campaign would soon say, it’s morning in America. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ premiere review: Are you rooting for these Russians?
I have added HD screencaptures from last night pilot episode of The Americans.
GALLERY LINKS:
– Screen Captures 1×01 > Pilot
After a long and cold day of filming their FX show “The Americans,” exhausted stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys had a little loopy, fatigued fun with “Extra.”
