Category Articles & Interviews

Phew! Keri Russell was totally fine with not winning the Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series during the star-studded event in L.A. on Sunday, September 17.

“It’s such a cool thing to be nominated and I’m always very secretly thankful I don’t have to speak publicly,” The Americans actress, 41, exclusively told Us Weekly after the show.

“Always secretly relieved. Always,” she added. “I just go, ‘Oh my God. Thank God.’”

The win eventually went to Elisabeth Moss for her gritty role in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The two were also up against Viola Davis (How to Get Away With Murder), Claire Foy (The Crown), Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld) and Robin Wright (House of Cards).

Russell, now happy that the categories were all announced, let her hair down for the rest of the night. She and her longtime partner, costar Matthew Rhys, hit up the Governors Ball together.

“Now you can have fun!” she told Us, holding up a beer. She was later spotted dancing with a group of friends to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’”

The couple met on set of FX’s The Americans in 2013 and are parents of son Sam, 15 months.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/

Sharing a sweet moment on Sunday, Matthew Rhys lent a helping hand to Keri Russell’s hair.

At the Vanity Fair and FX’s pre-Emmys celebration at the Century City eatery Craft in Los Angeles, Rhys was photographed standing in front of Russell, giving her hair-do a final adjustment.

Rhys, 42, wore a navy blue jacket and dark jeans while Russell, 41, wore a long, tiered red dress with spaghetti straps.

Both Rhys and Russell have received Emmy nominations for the final season of their hit Cold War spy drama, The Americans.

Back in June, Rhys told PEOPLE that one of they keys to making his real-life relationship with Russell work while they are also spending almost every day together on set together at The Americans was making sure they both got alone time.

He also expressed his gratitude for Russell’s positive attitude. “She has the patience of a saint, so that helps,” he said. “That is basically it.”

Well, Rhys admitted there was one other tool that really helped.

“And alcohol,” Rhys added with a laugh. “The great leveled, the great equalizer. Everything is so much better after a good, solid half bottle of red wine!”

Source: http://people.com

When Keri Russell started on The Americans in 2013, she had no idea how much it would change her entire life.

“It’s all been good change, and I’m very, very grateful for it,” the actress, 41, says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. Of course, she’s referring not only to her success in the Emmy-nominated role but also to gaining a partner in costar Matthew Rhys, 42, with whom she has a son, Sam, 1. (She’s also mom to River, 10, and Willa, 5, from her previous marriage.) “It’s been a wild, crazy run of a show.”

And the show that brought her a new love, a new child and a new outlook on life — “this summer feels like the Summer of Yes!” she says of her overall optimistic attitude — is wrapping up soon. She will start shooting the sixth and final season in October.

“It will be sad, but it feels kind of right too,” says Russell of The Americans ending after next season. “The hardest thing would be watching something that is so creative and well thought out to become played out. It feels like the right time to get out while it’s good, and I feel like they have a real solid last season of storylines. I feel like it’s the right time.”

She’ll also miss working alongside Rhys. “That brings its own complications — as anyone who works with a partner experiences — but I think I’ll miss it, too. There’s something so great about having someone so close for funny moments or really hard moments or really mundane moments, like ‘Can you pick up laundry soap on your way home because we’re out?’ or ‘We’re out of milk.’ ”

So, before returning to film the show’s final season this fall, Russell is taking the summer to “rest and be with my kids, so I can go back and be awake and present for the last few episodes of the show,” she says. “It’s been life-changing to me in many, many ways that show, and I just want to enjoy it. I want to really relish those last few moments of it.”

That means her summer is filled with date nights with Rhys, which “usually involve riding our bikes and cold beer,” short trips upstate and to the Hamptons (she recently journeyed to the summer enclave to host a dinner with Saks Fifth Avenue), as well as a two-week trip to Wales to visit Rhys’ family “and introduce the baby around.” Especially because he’s growing so quickly: “He’s like a no-neck rugby player,” says Russell (Rhys is a notorious fan of the sport). “He’s like a tank!”

Other than that, “we’re just hanging around, enjoying summer in the city,” she says. “We’re mellow. We really love our home in Brooklyn, even when it’s hot and sweaty.”

Source: http://ew.com/

Though she’s mostly well known for Felicity and the critical darling The Americans, Keri Russell has a long list of credits that stretches back to the Mickey Mouse Club. When she was 17, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera were just coming on the show as cast members. That Disney show was her first big break before the series that has cemented her status in the pop culture firmament, and arguably shaped her career. Russell played Felicity Porter, an idealistic high school student as she’s making her way to college. When she cut her hair, it caused a national uproar. But Russell says she’s got no regrets. “I did not expect all the hysteria,” she says. “I feel like it was so the right move and I’m really glad they did it.” Russell won her first Golden Globe for the show—which was created by Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams, who would later cast the actress in Mission Impossible III—and was nominated earlier this year for her acclaimed spy series The Americans, which is coming to a close next year, a conclusion she’s slowly coming to terms with.”It will have been six years and I just feel like they have a really good ending,” she says.
Continue reading Keri Russell Has Zero Regrets About the Infamous Felicity Haircut: “I’m Really Glad They Did It”

Sneakers, schmeakers! When it comes to riding a bike, Keri Russell prefers stilettos instead.

“I feel extra summery being on my bike in high heels,” The Americans star, 41, told PeopleStyle after co-hosting the Saks Fifth Avenue & Vogue ‘Kick Off the Summer’ dinner at EMP Summer House in East Hampton, N.Y. last night. “It feels very over-the-top decadent somehow.”

And it’s something the mother of three — to River, 10, Willa, 5 (from her former relationship with carpenter Shane Deary) and Sam, 1 (with her Americans co-star and partner Matthew Rhys) — loves doing all summer long, especially when going out with Rhys.

“[Date night] usually involves night bike-riding, and these days, high heels,” she says. “I just love dressing up. When I was younger, I drove a pickup truck and I wanted to wear boots and jeans everywhere, and as you get older, you’re like, ‘Being a girl is fun.’”

Therefore, it’s no surprise she chose a pair of ankle-tie heels to complete her girly Johanna Ortiz top and ruffle skirt look while hosting the dinner in the Hamptons last night. “I’ve just been so entranced by Johanna Ortiz and what she’s doing lately,” says Russell. “She’s just so fun and it feels so feminine, and so I asked if I could borrow something from her new collection.”

Russell credits costume designer Frank Fleming for helping her choose the two-piece combination. “I met him on a film years and years ago, and now he helps me as a favor as a stylist,” she says. “I kind of have an idea of what I want and then Frank makes it better, always. He always leads me down the right path.”

Her transition from a tomboy to feminine style isn’t the only major change she’s made in her 40s. The former poster girl for curly hair — Felicity Porter for life — is now obsessed with Keratin hair treatments. “I get it once or twice a year and it’s a dream come true,” she says. “It’s everything to a curly haired girl, because you don’t have to blow it out, you don’t have to do all these things to it — nothing. It can be wet and you can walk out the door and it looks good.”

And it especially comes in handy being a busy mom: “It’s a life-changer, and a time-saver,” she says. “There’s no time to brush your teeth, let alone blow dry your hair!”

Source: http://people.com/

In the red-hot race for Best Drama Actress, most of Gold Derby’s Emmy experts are split between Elisabeth Moss (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) and Claire Foy (“The Crown”). However, one expert — Kerr Lordygan (Rotten Tomatoes) — goes rogue in predicting that Keri Russell will win for her long-running character of Elizabeth Jennings on FX’s Russian spy drama “The Americans.” It took four years for Emmy voters to nominate Russell, Matthew Rhys and “The Americans” in the drama races, and now increased buzz and attention could bring Russell her first victory.

In Russell’s favor is the fact that she’s constantly going undercover as Elizabeth, so she gets to play many different versions of the same character. That’s like catnip to Emmy voters, who love seeing performers show their range and versatility. Just last year fan favorite Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) won for playing multiple clones, with different looks, accents and personalities. With Maslany out of contention this year, might Russell benefit? Eighteen of our 20 experts think that Russell will at least be nominated, though only Lordygan forecasts that she’ll win.

Source: http://www.goldderby.com/

As FX’s critically acclaimed drama “The Americans” heads toward its final season, the show’s creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields came to the ATX TV Festival to discuss their approach to the last ten episodes, but managed to artfully evade revealing too much about the fates of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings and their family.

Fields and Weisberg admitted that with all the talk of Russia in the news, they often devoted lunch hours to talking politics, but current events didn’t spill over into the plotlines. “When we write the show, we’re in a bubble,” said Weisberg, in the panel moderated by Variety‘s executive editor of TV Debra Birnbaum. “We don’t want people watching and thinking those clever writers put something there about Donald Trump.”

Fields said that the recent headlines of Russians spying on Americans and tampering with elections did impact them. “We’ve spent years learning how good the Russians were at this kind of spy craft,” he said “To see it play out on the news now at this high level is staggering.” Weisberg added, “When the show started, things were peaceful with Russia. We thought we’d humanize people who were thought to be our enemy, and now, a few years later, people are foaming at the mouth about them.” Continue reading The Americans’ EPs Talk ‘Action-Packed and Emotion-Packed’ Final Season

One thing that makes FX’s lauded Cold War drama “The Americans” so compelling is the chemistry between Keri Russell, who starred in four seasons of “Felicity” in her early 20s, and Welsh actor Matthew Rhys. As Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, Russian spies living as Americans in 1980s suburbia, they make their kids’ lunches and then slip away to don disguises, seduce sources and break necks for the Motherland.

But Russell and Rhys’ electricity on the show, created by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg and just having finished its fifth season before a 10-episode sprint to a series finale, is nothing compared to the sparks they throw off in real life.

Settling into the series’ writers room in gritty Gowanus in New York’s Brooklyn, surrounded by whiteboards with scribbled plot points and grainy show stills, the couple, who have an infant son (Russell also has two children from a previous relationship), are clearly simpatico — finishing each other’s thoughts and cracking each other up.

Matthew Rhys as Philip Jennings and Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings on “The Americans.”
Continue reading The Americans and its stars forge on — who knew Russian spies could be so relevant?