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Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys and exec producers Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields reflect on the episode’s three biggest twists and lightly tease what’s to come.

ARE WE IN MAYBERRY? | After several months away “visiting her aunt,” a fully recovered Elizabeth returned home with a surprising new accessory: a smile. The entire Jennings clan seemed to be enjoying a rare moment of bliss. “Everything was great,” shares Rhys. “There was a real sense of, ‘Possibly, this could be fine. We can all be happy spies ever after.’” Adds Weisberg: “This is the first time that Phillip and Elizabeth are able to be happy as a couple after that year of struggling with their marriage. It’s their time to be married.”

THE OTHER SHOE | Their temporary respite from doom-and-gloom was shattered in the hour’s final act when Phillip and Elizabeth found the bodies of their spy doppelgangers — Emmett and Leanne Connors — lying in a pool of blood in a hotel room. The Conners’ daughter also was killed; only the son managed to survive. “They lost these people who are really like them,” points out Weisberg. “It sets this undercurrent of, “Are we next?” Before, their primary fear was, “We might be on an operation and get killed or arrested. The kids could be orphaned, or sent to a state orphanage because we’re in prison.” But now that’s different. Now their family could get killed. It’s a whole different thing. It’s an emotional punch that you struggle with.” The bloodbath affects Elizabeth “in a massive way,” previews Russell. “She hasn’t been worried about her children in that physical way, but now the danger is encroaching on her family. This whole season is about protecting her family.”

KITCHEN NIGHTMARES | Phillip is now murdering innocent people — in this case, a busboy who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Once his wig comes off and [the busboy] could see him and recognize him in a line-up, he made the snap decision to shoot him,” explains Rhys. “And it starts to weigh heavily on him this season. Not specifically this death, but the consequences of what they do.” Fields admits he wasn’t worried that the brazen incident would make Phillip irredeemable in viewers’ eyes. “We really don’t think that way,” he shares. “We think about being true to where the characters are. What choice did he have once he was in that situation? He had been seen. Was that busboy not going to go to the police and do a composite sketch? Had [Phillip] not ripped off his wig, he probably would’ve walked straight out.”

Source: http://tvline.com

“I’m just going to lay down here because I’m so fucking tired,” said Keri Russell, flopping down on a bed covered in paper and plastic. It was a 20-something-degree polar-vortex-ed February afternoon in Brooklyn; she still had several hours to go filming an episode of her FX Cold War Russian-spy drama The Americans on set; and she’d already been up for hours at the beck and call of her other bosses, her 6-year-old son and 14-month-old daughter. “It started at 6 a.m. with two children,” she said. “With a baby going, ‘Mo-om. Mo-om!’ She can’t even talk, but she can bark ‘mom’ at me.” Now, as if the car service that takes her to work were also a time machine, this season focuses on her character Elizabeth’s exhausting relationship with a newly rebelling teenage daughter. She finds their scenes even more tiring than the life-or-death, sex-and-bullet-filled missions that are de rigueur for Elizabeth, who, unbeknownst to her kid, is an undercover KGB operative. Russell nestled further into the uncomfy set bed. “I just like to lay amongst the bubble wrap,” she said, her voice trailing off.

The mother-daughter tension is a major through line of The Americans’ second season (which kicks off tonight at 10 p.m.). Last season, teenage Paige seemed an innocent, her biggest worry (well, other than pervy guys picking her and her brother up on the side of the road) was that her parents might be splitting up for good. But while the first season ended with Elizabeth and arranged husband/spy partner Phillip Jennings reconciling and nurturing true feelings for each other, Paige’s adolescence is made more complicated by her suspicions about her parents’ secret laundry room meetings and her newfound interest in organized religion, which, to a pair of devoted Communists, is a truly objectionable wholesome passion. Executive producer Joe Weisberg, who studied Soviet history at Yale, explained later that this was the equivalent of a drug addiction. “It would be like joining a cult,” he said. “It would make them insane.” Continue reading Sex, Murder, and Parenting on the Set of The Americans

The undercover Russian spies of The Americans returns to FX on Wednesday for its sophomore season, and this time around, the whole family is in for a wild — and potentially deadly — ride.

At the season two premiere of The Americans at New York City’s Paris Theater on Monday night, Keri Russell told reporters that the critically-acclaimed Cold War spy drama’s new season zooms in on the various suburban family dynamics within the Jennings unit, rather than solely between the married Soviet KGB agents. “I think the main thing is it’s less oppositional between us, and more of the family against the world, protecting the family,” she told The Hollywood Reporter, noting that her character becomes much more vulnerable as a mother. “The opposition is from the scary guys who are out there trying to kill us, basically.”

Added Matthew Rhys, “With the unification of the two, other elements of their mandates and jobs puts a greater stress on their new relationship — the honey trapping, the information, my other marriage with Martha. As things become very real, they’re no longer two separate entities within a marriage. On a human level, it’s like an extreme version of envy and jealousy that other relationships have to deal with.” Continue reading ‘The Americans’: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys Tease Season 2 Marriage and Espionage Twists

It’s 1982, the Cold War is raging, and Keri Russell is posing as a married suburban mom as a cover for her real identity; a badass Soviet secret agent in the FX drama The Americans. Things get even juicier in the second season, beginning tonight at 10, as Russell’s Elizabeth Jennings faces exposure threats from not only the FBI guy neighbor but moles, KGB leaks and her own increasingly suspicious teenage daughter. So naturally, she lies, schemes and seduces her targets. We asked her about a character that’s the furthest thing from Felicity—and her upcoming Apes flick.

How would you characterize Elizabeth as this season begins?
More exposed. I find the power and steely strength that Elizabeth has is very grounding. I enjoy the vulnerability and sexuality of her and I’m continually interested in the mining and uncovering of the relationships. It’s so interesting to me that it can be tender and loyal and devious and thrilling all at once.

She has to share her husband with his pretend wife, Martha the mole.
It definitely plays a part this season in a way that it did not before because of her emotional engagement. Elizabeth is now re-engaged with her husband and family in way that she was not before. Not only is she physically shaken from the stabbing at the end of last season, she’s more vulnerable emotionally because of this new engagement and it’s very scary to her and that puts her very off center. So it’s heartbreaking for her when he has to go [to Martha] sometimes when she needs him. There are some interesting scenes that come up about midway through that will answer some questions.

Married or not, she’s still using sex as an espionage tool.
The good thing about the sexuality in the show, at least where I’m coming at it from, is it’s not this big sweeping romantic movie where you have to be so in love and so beautiful and so sexy. You’re usually using the sexuality, at least in the spy end of it, to get something. There is kind of a freedom in that.

When did you find time to do Dawn of the Planet of the Apes?
During my break. God, I wanted a break, but when someone you adore and love and respect so much like Matt Reeves calls and says ‘Come and do this with me….’ I said, ‘Matt I’m so tired.’ And he said, ‘The first month will be hard but the next month and a half will be easy, you’ll get all these days off.’ But it was all fucking hard! It was cold and it rained all day and there were so many times when I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ But working with Andy Serkis was incredible, the locations we shot in, it’s huge. It’s really kind of mythic.

Source: http://www.mademan.com/

It’s 1982, and the pair of KGB spies posing as a married couple in the Washington suburbs is about to send a colleague on a mission, one that doesn’t end well.

The Americans, returning for a second season Wednesday (10 p.m. ET/PT) on FX, is filming its finale on a raw, rainy day in Queens, where a pay phone under a bridge provides a handy period prop for Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), sporting one of his signature disguises, a ponytailed wig and mustache.

It’s not the first time the couple has faced danger: Elizabeth (Keri Russell) was shot late last season, and as the new one picks up a few months later, her wounds are finally repaired — and so is her arranged marriage.

But trouble looms, and it’s not just from the FBI, whose so-far-unsuspecting agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) is a friendly neighbor trysting with Nina, a Russian double agent. The couple’s own teenage daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) is growing suspicious of her parents.

For Elizabeth, being “more engaged within the marriage and the family makes her much more vulnerable and complicates her work,” says Russell, sitting with Rhys in the back seat of a 1979 Ford Granada used in the scene. “Things get messier. She’s not that efficient of a soldier.” Continue reading ‘The Americans’ aims for better work-life balance