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The New Power New York List

Introduction
There are as many power lists in New York as there are Uber drivers. Most celebrate long-standing legends like Harvey Weinstein, Barbara Walters, and Michael Bloomberg. But there’s a new league of movers and shakers upending the entertainment business in Manhattan and beyond. These trailblazers tend to be more digitally savvy, entrepreneurial, and unafraid to ruffle feathers.

Keri Russell
Actress

The star of “The Americans” is at the top of her game as an actress, earning raves on the FX drama, which films in Brooklyn. This year, Emmy voters finally recognized her work with a best actress nomination. She navigated between her day job and her role in the Civil War big-screen drama “Free State of Jones” this year all while preparing for the arrival in June of son, Sam, a co-production with her boyfriend and “Americans” co-star, Matthew Rhys.

Source: http://variety.com

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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Keri Russell

Tomorrow evening, the 68th Emmy Awards will be broadcast from Los Angeles, where Keri Russell will be a contender for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role in The Americans—her first-ever Emmy nomination. Russell’s costar and real-life love, Matthew Rhys, is also a contender in the actor category. Because the FX series has been largely overlooked for three seasons running, the couple—who earlier this summer welcomed their son, Sam—didn’t even bother tuning into the live nominations announcement. “You just think if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s probably never going to happen,” Russell said in August. The subsequent celebration at their summer home in Woodstock, New York, included a pair of Pacíficos and a cheese quesadilla (“Because we’re classy”). Ahead of tomorrow night’s awards, here are five things you may not have known about the artist formerly known as Felicity.

1. After Russell infamously cut her signature curly hair during season two of Felicity, show ratings tanked and a media firestorm ensued. As a result, WB executives called for network approval of all future hairstyle changes requested by talent. “Nobody is cutting their hair again on our network,” WB’s entertainment president said at the time. “People still take it really personally,” Russell said. “They come up to me at breakfast places like, ‘When are you growing your hair back?’ It grows back, crazies!” Rhys was recently asked what his reaction would be if Russell came home with a similar chop. “I’d be like, ‘I hope you kept that hair, we can put it on eBay. Buy Felicity’s real hair.’ Baby Sam needs to go to college.”

2. Russell has said the sex scenes in The Americans can be a little uncomfortable. “No one wakes up on Tuesday morning at 6:00 a.m. and is [excited to be] like, ‘Hey! Nice to meet ya! Okay, here we go, whoooo!’ with 50 of our friends watching,” she has said. While the scenes are typically filmed at “some cheap-y hotel in Staten Island,” Russell takes a similarly laid-back approach to her pre-take getting ready routine. “There is no way this is going to happen unless there is a beer had. Are you serious? Hello, stranger!” It’s awkward for Rhys, too: “I get a little protective,” he said last month. “I’m like, ‘Can someone get her a f—in’ robe, please? She’s standing there naked, we’ve cut for five seconds, Jesus Christ. And they’re like, ‘Dude, this is the fourth season.’”

3. Russell got her start at age 15 when she answered an open casting call for the Disney Channel’s nationwide search for singers, dancers, and actors in The All New Mickey Mouse Club. Russell was hired as a dancer, but she was too good an actress to stay in the follies. “She ended up being this fantastic actor, so we started writing more sketches for her,” cohost Fred Newman later said. One of 19 kids on the show, Russell has said the cast often threw sleepovers and took trips together. “The job felt less like work and more like going to a really intense dance class. And um, my high school boyfriend was Tony Lucca. He was the James Taylor of our group.” (In 2012, Lucca competed on The Voice, where he butted heads with judge and former Mousketeer Christina Aguilera. He came in second. Russell voted for him.)

4. Before Russell was cast in Felicity, she was a contender to play Cher Horowitz in Clueless. “The one that—she was in that show and she cut her hair and everybody was mad? Keri Russell, yes,” Amy Heckerling, the writer and director of Clueless, later recalled.

5. Russell was almost too good-looking to play Felicity. “In the original script, Felicity was having lunch at high school with her best friend Maya, ‘a tragically beautiful girl,’” Russell said. “And I called my manager and said, ‘They’re gonna want me to play the stupid best friend. They’re gonna see me and go, No, thanks. But will you come back in and read the two-line character of Maya?”’ For the audition, Russell went makeup-free, wore her hair in a bun, and dressed in baggy jeans and a sweater, but it didn’t work. “When Keri came in, I was blown away,” Felicity creator J.J. Abrams said. “She was so pretty, I thought there was no way she could play the part. And then she started reading and was just funny as hell. And if you’re funny, I don’t care, you win.”

Source: http://www.vogue.com

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Why Keri Russell Is Worried About Her Favorite Place In The Country

For actress Keri Russell, a love of wild spaces goes back to the beginning of her career.

In a video shared exclusively with Refinery29, the star of The Americans relates a personal story about protecting America’s natural beauty.

“I had this binder that I kept my scripts in,” she said, referencing the insane, 18-hour days of her TV career in her early 20s. “On the cover, I had found this photo of Alaska. You know, the big, amazing mountains and water. And that was kind of my solace, in working on these dark stages. I would just look at that photo and think, I’m going to go there.”

Not quite 20 years later, she’s finally made it. She’s seen Alaska and she wants it to stay.

Russell is speaking out with environmental organization The Sierra Club to highlight the crisis facing the Arctic due to fossil fuel development and climate change. The organization is calling on President Obama to protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from drilling and other threats.

At more than 30,000 square miles, the ANWR is the largest National Wildlife Refuge in the United States. The refuge stretches across five different ecological regions, and supports hundreds of species of mammals, fish, and birds. However, it remains vulnerable to oil drilling and fossil fuel development as part of a political compromise from the 1970s and ’80s.

The video showcases the beauty of the untouched landscape across the wide, sweeping spaces of the refuge. “It’s pretty amazing,” Russell said.

“Of course, we don’t want them to drill here,” Russell said. “It would be such a tragedy. I need those spaces; I don’t want them to go away.”

Source: http://www.refinery29.com

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Filed in Articles & Interviews The Americans

Daniel Fienberg: The 10 Nominees I’ll Be Rooting Hardest For at the Emmys

From the leading lady of ‘The Americans’ to the DP on ‘The Man in the High Castle’ to a cross-dressing supporting player on ‘Baskets,’ THR’s TV critic picks the people he most ardently wants to see grab the gold.

The 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards will be handed out on September 10 and 11 (the “creative arts” ceremony, perplexingly spread out over two parts) and September 18 (the actual ABC telecast hosted by Jimmy Kimmel), and I’ll be taking a rooting interest in every category because, like most TV viewers, I have preferences and I take them personally.

But here are 10 nominees I’ll be rooting for especially enthusiastically on the various Emmy nights. I intentionally left out winners that I expect are no-brainers. I don’t need to stress out rooting for Sarah Paulson and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, because they’ll be just fine. Some of these are longshots, some are probably favorites, but if the 2016 Emmys want me looking back with fond memories, at least a few of them had better win.

Keri Russell, ‘The Americans’
I could have filled half of the slots on this list with categories in which I’ll be rooting for The Americans, but if The Americans won in all the categories it deserves to, it critics would no longer be able to feel superior in our love of The Americans and what would be the point in that? It’s a tribute to how great Keri Russell is on The Americans — Elizabeth’s kitchen staredown with Paige from this season is worth all available awards — that I’ll be rooting for the Felicity veteran in a category that’s pretty remarkable. Cookie Lyon remains one of TV’s most entertaining characters. Tatiana Maslany is a multi-faceted marvel. Viola Davis nails everything her erratic show lets her do. But this year, which saw Elizabeth do worse and more conflicted and conflicting things than ever before, should be Russell’s year.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

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Filed in Articles & Interviews The Americans

Keri Russell on Her First Emmy Nomination, for ‘The Americans’

In 1999, after a single season as the bountifully curled college student at the helm of WB’s “Felicity,” Keri Russell won a Golden Globe. Seventeen years and countless hairstyles later, Ms. Russell has finally earned recognition for the strongest role of her career — an Emmy Award nomination for playing Elizabeth Jennings, the K.G.B. agent and master of disguise, on FX’s “The Americans.” The 68th Emmy Awards will be held on Sept. 18.

It was the first Emmy nomination for Ms. Russell, who, despite high marks in that critically acclaimed show, had been overlooked its three previous seasons. The icing on the cake: Matthew Rhys, her onscreen husband (Philip Jennings) and offscreen partner, earned his first nomination as well.

“To be honest, we weren’t paying attention to it at all, because for so many years we haven’t been acknowledged,” she said. “What a fun surprise. Because in a strange way I feel like we’re the bad kids who got invited to the party — like somehow this year we slipped through the cracks.”

In a recent phone conversation from the couple’s country home in Woodstock, N.Y., Ms. Russell talked about working under the radar; life with their newborn, Sam; and the real reason they drink so much wine. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. Continue reading Keri Russell on Her First Emmy Nomination, for ‘The Americans’

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Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys On ‘The Americans’ Emmy-Nominated 4th Season

When The Americans stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell arrived for Deadline’s shoot at a quaint upstate NY inn near where they were on holiday, they brought the latest member of their entourage. That would be Sam, a two-month-old who seems right out of central casting for cutest baby ever. In a fourth season of the Reagan era Cold War FX spy drama series that featured a dizzying amount of surprises on screen, the pending stork visit for Rhys and Russell’s first child together was one of two plot twists that surprised showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, who had to accelerate shooting to get the season in before Russell was due, hiding a pregnancy that was not worked into the plot line.

The other surprise was that, after three seasons as a critical darling and a guilty pleasure, The Americans finally got love from the Television Academy, and reached that critical consensus that occasionally catapults an established show like Friday Night Lights. The Americans is up for five major Emmy Awards including Outstanding Drama Series, one each for Rhys and Russell as lead actors, one for Outstanding Writing for Weisberg and Fields, and another for Margo Martindale, who last year won the show’s only Emmy in the Guest Actress category. Continue reading Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys On ‘The Americans’ Emmy-Nominated 4th Season

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‘The Americans’: 10 Things We Learned From the Showrunners at TCA

“The Americans” showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields took a well-deserved victory lap at the Television Critics Association press tour on Tuesday, on the heels of the FX drama nabbing breakthrough Emmy noms for drama series and acting bids for stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell.

Weisberg and Fields addressed the process of mapping out the show’s final two seasons during the Q&A at the Beverly Hilton. The spoiler-conscious showrunners didn’t give up much in terms of plot points for season five and six. But a few things could be deduced from the pair’s cautious comments.

Here are 10 things we learned from “The Americans” panel:

– Martha lives! Alison Wright’s Martha Hanson character was shipped off to the Soviet Union at the end of last season after she learned the truth of her sham marriage to Rhys’ Clark alter ego. Weisberg and Fields wouldn’t confirm whether she will be seen again in the upcoming seasons but she’s definitely still kicking in the Motherland. “Martha’s not dead. She made it there,” Fields said.
– Season five will consist of 13 episodes. The final season will be 10 episodes, to keep the storytelling taut, Weisberg said.
– During the first season, Weisberg and Fields were very worried about whether the show could pull off extended scenes in the Soviet embassy with characters speaking entirely in Russian. “It’s crazy when we think back to the first season how risky it seemed to do those scenes in Russian,” Fields said.
– Margo Martindale and Frank Langella will be back next season in their roles as Soviet spy handlers for Rhys and Russell’s Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. Martindale’s Claudia will have a “bigger story” next year, Weisberg said.
– The seed planted at the end of season four that Philip’s adult son Mischa from a previous relationship is about to crash the Jennings’ world in the U.S. was a “late realization” for the writing team. “When we last saw (Mischa) it was ambiguous if that character even really existed,” Weisberg said.
– Weisberg and Fields’ vision for how the series would end didn’t take shape until the break between season one and season two. “We had to figure out what the show was first,” Fields said. In the beginning, the primary goal was clear: “Don’t get canceled,” Weisberg said.
– As tense as things were between Philip and Elizabeth and their teenage daughter Paige (played by Holly Taylor) at the end of season four, just wait. “The stuff that’s been percolating and brewing with the Paige recruitment and them struggling in this incredible triangle is really going to finally come to a boil,” Weisberg said.
– When oh when will Noah Emmerich’s rock-ribbed FBI guy Stan Beeman finally realize that the Ruskie spies he seeks are right across the street? “The suspicions that have been percolating between the Jennings and their across-the-street neighbor are going to get more suspicious but in surprising ways,” Fields said.
– Of all the wigs and disguises the producers have thrust upon Russell and Rhys, the only one that Russell has rejected is a wig that is way too close to her “Felicity” persona from the WB Network days. Everybody else in the “Americans” company has put it on for a picture. But not Russell, Fields said.
– Weisberg was particularly nervous about whether the nine-month time jump that the show took in season four would work. “Joe’s first words after seeing the director’s cut was ‘Oh my god, it worked,’ ” Fields said. Weisberg gave a lot of credit to a discreet hairstyling choice. “It was such a subtle, simple thing — we tied Paige’s hair back into a ponytail and that gave her a sterner look. It was the littlest thing but it did so much to make it work,” he said.

Source: http://variety.com/

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Emmys: Keri Russell Reveal Favorite Scenes, Biggest Challenges

What do you like best about your character?
“The show does a really good job of reversing the typical roles of males and females, and I think it’s a very complicated, in-depth look at a messy, real relationship. What appealed to me in the beginning is that the female was a little less invested in the relationship. That’s such an interesting take because it’s always the woman who is pining after this guy who is cheating on her. And it wasn’t that. She’s like, ‘No, this is our job, and I’m in love with someone else, and that’s what I get from that.’ And [Matthew Rhys’ character, Philip] was the one who was really sweet and sensitive. But then where we ended the fourth season — and I love that it took four seasons for her to finally have emotions — there was so much jealousy for that character and so much pain in him having true feelings, or whatever it was that he had, for the Martha character. That is such a great arc for a character to get to play that.”

Most helpful thing for getting into character
“One of the most enjoyable parts is the trying on of the wigs and 1980s glasses that we do in the hair and makeup trailers. Almost all of them are really bad, and we just sit and laugh with each other and tell each other how bad we look.”

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

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Keri Russell’s Beauty Diary: Exclusive Details on Her Smoky Look for Obama’s State Dinner

Keri Russell — queen of the flawless complexion — was positively glowing during Tuesday night’s state dinner at the White House.

The Americans actress and her on-and-off-screen beau Matthew Rhys attended the black-tie event as guests of the President and First Lady Michelle Obama (who wowed in an ivory dress designed by Brandon Maxwell).

Having selected a halter neck Stephane Rolland dress with a brilliant gold panel, as well as Ana Khouri jewelry, the star then turned to her makeup artist of nearly a decade, Tina Turnbow, to create a sultry, smoky eye with iconic inspiration: Cleopatra and legendary opera singer Maria Callas.

“I gasped at the unique, cool style and fit of her stylist Frank Fleming’s choice. The dress had a certain strength and power to it that influenced the way I approached her eye makeup: bold yet undone and modern,” Turnbow explained. Continue reading Keri Russell’s Beauty Diary: Exclusive Details on Her Smoky Look for Obama’s State Dinner

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Keri Russell on new Emmy love: So long, ‘underdog’

The Americans is no longer a critical hit in hiding.

After three years of Emmy snubs, the spy drama rebounded this year with nominations for best drama series and lead actors Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys.

Russell and Rhys, a couple in real life who welcomed a son in May, were “in shock,” says Russell. “We were like, we’ve not been nominated so many times we were so sure we’d never be nominated! But maybe because it’s the fourth season (of the show) there’s so much less pressure. It just feels very fun.”

But there could be consequences. “I know,” she laughs. “We’re like, ‘Oh, no!’ Now no one’s going to like our show now. The underdog position is the place to be.”

Her summer maternity leave is full of little sleep and “fireflies.” The actress, who has two children with her ex, Shane Deary, says she and Rhys will return to shoot the fifth season in New York this October (A sixth in 2018 will wrap up the series). “It wasn’t exactly planned that way, but it did all work out pretty well,” she says of the baby’s timing. “It’s been a pretty fun summer of nature and kids and not a lot of sleep.”

And just like the rest of us, she’s trying to cobble clues about next season. “Before I left for the summer we got tipped off about one certain thing,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Guys, if I need to learn Russian, just tell me now. If we’re going to be doing heavy-duty Russian, I want to be learning it over the summer, not like a week before I have to perform it.”

Source: http://www.usatoday.com

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