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Exec producer Joel Fields said Saturday during the Television Critics Association press tour that the writing staff has been surprised at how long it’s taken to move through the early 1980s. The FX period drama revolves around covert Soviet spies played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys.

Fields was pressed as to whether he and exec producer/creator Joe Weisberg have an end date for the series in mind — in terms of the number of season on FX and the chronological year in the storyline. In the past the pair have hinted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 would be a logical end point for the story rooted in the last gasp of the Cold War.

The upcoming fourth season, which bows March 16, returns with the storyline picking up in 1983. Using the three-act drama metaphor, Fields said he feels like the show is “coming to the end of its second act” at the close of season four. He suggested that the tale of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings might be wrapped up with a fifth or sixth season, but he also stressed that there was no concrete decision on the span of the series. Moreover, there’s no certainty about renewals from FX.
Continue reading ‘The Americans’: Producers, Stars Talk Season 4 and Possible End Date

The pressure is building in The Americans.

When the FX spy drama starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys returns for a fourth season on March 16, it will largely focus on the threat of bioweapons and the Jenning’s big secret getting out. Executive producer Joel Fields, on hand at the Television Critics Association winter press tour to promote the series, suggested that he and creator Joe Weisberg are about two-thirds of the way through the story they want to tell.

Fields acknowledged on stage that he isn’t sure how long the series will run. “What we do know is that if you were to think of it as a three act story structure, it feels like we’re coming toward the end of the second act. Whether it takes a fifth season or a sixth or fifth season to tell the rest of that story, we’ll discover as we start to dig into next season’s work,” he said, adding later in the panel: “I really don’t have an answer about how many seasons except that we’ll do what’s right for the storytelling and we always seem to surprise ourselves.” Continue reading ‘The Americans’ Could End After Fifth or Sixth Season, Says EP