Articles & Interviews – Page 26

FX Boss Promises Americans Renewal, Bets Big on Fargo

Fans of the FX drama The Americans may not have to wait much longer for good news about the show’s future.

“I expect we’ll have a formal Season 3 order announcement soon,” FX Networks CEO John Landgraf told reporters at an upfront news conference in New York Wednesday. “We look forward to it being on our schedule for quite some time.”

Although the show’s ratings are small (and have declined since the Season 2 premiere), Landgraf says the show’s audience increases as much as 400 percent when factoring in DVR users. “That’s a stunning level of DVR usage, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” he says. “It literally changes the equation. You wake up the next morning and get your Nielsen report card — it doesn’t mean very much. Everything’s gotten more complicated … which makes it interesting, but it isn’t the good old days where you can just pick the fruit right off the tree.”

Source: http://www.tvguide.com/

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‘The Americans’: Hair department spills 8 tidbits about the show’s outrageous ’80s wig

One of the best parts of watching FX’s rollicking spy drama The Americans is getting to see just what Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell wear next — on their heads, that is.

Peg Schierholz, who leads the show’s hair department, has plenty to say about the fun that goes into creating the gorgeous 1980s styles that adorn Phillip, Elizabeth, and the rest of their Russian-American spy friends. And in fact, that’s why their hair is so big: it’s full of secrets.

Read on for eight little factoids we learned from Schierholz in anticipation of Wednesday night’s episode, which might answer a few questions fans have about one character’s locks in particular.

1. The show’s first season used around 27 wigs, which Schierholz says is above average for your standard non-Game of Thrones, non-fantasy show. Rented from two wig houses in London — Campbell Young and Alex Rouse — Schierholz receives shipments of 10 or so and holds sessions with the actors for both fitting and brainstorming, “if a certain wig gives us any ideas.” By the 10th episode of season 2, production had already surpassed the first season’s wig count. Continue reading ‘The Americans’: Hair department spills 8 tidbits about the show’s outrageous ’80s wig

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Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys Play Spies in Our Midst

Current events notwithstanding, the Cold War is in full swing on “The Americans,” FX’s Reagan-era spy drama.

The television series, filmed in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood and on-location throughout New York, follows two K.G.B. agents posing as an American couple in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, who ferret out U.S. secrets while running a travel agency and raising two children.

As it inches toward the Season Two midpoint, the show has sharpened its focus on the nebulous balance between espionage and domesticity.

Before “The Americans,” Ms. Russell, 38 years old, was best known for playing the title character in the college TV drama “Felicity.” Mr. Rhys, 39, is from Wales, and has become adept at concealing his accent in both this role and his former one, as Kevin Walker on the ABC series “Brothers and Sisters,” which ended in 2011.

Taking a break at the Russian Tea Room, the two actors discussed the show’s depiction of how spies raise children and filming through New York’s never-ending winter. Edited excerpts follow. Continue reading Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys Play Spies in Our Midst

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Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys Are a Couple

They’ve dodged relationship rumors for months. But now – unlike their spy characters on The Americans – the secret (love) life of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys has been revealed.

PEOPLE has learned that Russell, 38, and Rhys, 39, are a couple.

The two stepped out for date night on March 27, stopping into New York’s The Public Theater, where they watched the Steven Soderbergh-directed play The Library. They sat together and theatergoers spotted Russell stroking Rhys’s hair and the two whispering before they left together.

When asked about his rumored relationship with Russell, Rhys told PEOPLE last month, “That’s the best [rumor] I love.” He stopped short of confirming the relationship, but said his mother even asks about the rumors. “I tell her, ‘You have to take off your Google alerts,’ ” he said.

The couple’s recent theater date wasn’t the first time they were seen getting close. Earlier this year the two took a stroll through Brooklyn Heights. “They were walking super close together and laughing, even stopped to look at some furniture on the street,” an onlooker said of the pair at the time. “They looked very much like a couple.”

The new romance comes after Russell’s announcement last December that she and Shane Deary, her husband of nearly 7 years, were separating. The former couple have a son River, 6, and a daughter Willa, 2. The actress’s rep told PEOPLE at the time, “The separation is amicable and their focus is on their children.”

Source: http://www.people.com

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How Keri Russell Got in Fighting Shape for The Americans

In order to play a fierce, fearless KGB agent on her hit FX series The Americans, actress Keri Russell trained with Avital Zeisler, a self-defense and hand-to-hand combat expert who consults for private security companies. Zeisler is also the founder of the Soteria Method™, an exclusive method of self defense for women. And her expertise in krav maga—the skill Russell learned to perfect her super-tough character—made her the perfect trainer for the job.

Zeisler worked with the star three days a week for a few hours a session for a month, focusing on the fundamentals of self defense. As a survivor of sexual assault in her teens, Zeisler is on a mission to empower women everywhere, in and out of Hollywood. “I’m working really hard to redefine self defense and shine a positive light on it. It’s about letting your emotional guard down to create the best life possible but still learning how to defend yourself,” she says. “I figured out a way to get the body I want as a woman while being able to fight like a man.”

And Russell can attest to the workouts: “I did get a bloody lip, which I am sort of proud about, in the training. You should see the other guy though,” she has joked. “Working out this way makes you feel fierce. I tend to be internal—getting on the subway and keeping my eyes down. But I would leave those workouts looking people in the eye like, ‘sup?'” Continue reading How Keri Russell Got in Fighting Shape for The Americans

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Underneath the Wigs: Uncovering The Americans’ Hair-Raising Disguises

On the back of The Americans’ hair and makeup trailer door is a photo collage of the cast and crew each in the same wig. It’s not Clark or John Denver or any other of Philip’s (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth’s (Keri Russell) follicular get-ups on the FX series — but Felicity’s famous curls.

“Isn’t it hilarious? I love it,” Russell, the erstwhile Felicity, tells TVGuide.com with a laugh. “It’s so great. I’m all about the hair!”

So is The Americans. The spy drama has never met a wig it didn’t like, outfitting Russell and Rhys in such ridiculous and fantastic espionage ‘dos, ranging from dowdy to sexy, that the wigs have become the true stars of the show.

“It’s really been a wild experience,” Peg Schierholz, the show’s hair department head, says. “Lori [Hicks, the makeup head] and I had never intended for the wigs to blow up this way. It’s really amazing how much people love them. We kept getting these interesting scripts from the writers, then we’d start playing around with ideas and it just kind of evolved.” Continue reading Underneath the Wigs: Uncovering The Americans’ Hair-Raising Disguises

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Keri Russell Talks THE AMERICANS Season 2 and More

The FX period drama The Americans is back for Season 2, as it follows the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C., shortly after Ronald Reagan is elected President. The arranged marriage of Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), whose 14-year-old daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) and 11-year-old son Henry (Keidrich Sellati) know nothing about their parents’ true identity, is becoming more genuine, as the escalation of the Cold War makes everything more dangerous.

During this exclusive interview with Collider, actress Keri Russell talked about the endless complications for characters living in a spy world, how Season 2 gets more layered and rich, that Elizabeth is really knocked off of her center after the events of last season, where things are at now between Elizabeth and Phillip, how much she enjoys the bad-ass fight scenes, how happy she was to get Margo Martindale back for a bit of this season, and why she loves working with director Thomas Schlamme. She also talked about her experience making Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and how she owes her casting in the film to director Matt Reeves, who created the TV series Felicity with J.J. Abrams. Check out what she had to say after the jump, and be aware that there are some spoilers. Continue reading Keri Russell Talks THE AMERICANS Season 2 and More

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Keri Russell on fame, kids and series TV

Keri Russell still has great hair, but playing the deadly Soviet spy Elizabeth Jennings on “The Americans,” she has come a long way from the shy college coed she played on “Felicity” 15 years ago. But unlike either of the tightly wound characters on “The Americans” (FX), Russell is relaxed and personable.

Still, the actress, 37, does have one thing in common with Elizabeth — being the mother of two kids. Russell’s are 6 and 2 years old; Elizabeth’s are 14-year-old Paige (Holly Taylor) and 11-year-old Henry (Keidrich Sellati).

“What’s fun about the show is that Elizabeth goes on all these spy missions, and then she’s in the car flipping out like a normal mom about something that her 14-year-old girl is doing,” Russell says.

This strange dynamic has made “The Americans” a hit among fans and a critical success. The show has received two Emmy nominations and was named best new program by the Television Critics Association.

When the series launched its second season Feb. 26, the storyline had reached the year 1981, and Elizabeth and her husband, Philip (Matthew Rhys) — KGB sleeper agents for 15 years who pose as travel agents in the Washington, D.C., area — have barely escaped being caught in an FBI trap. Now the couple is once again juggling parental duties with espionage — involving assassinations, sex and disguises. Continue reading Keri Russell on fame, kids and series TV

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The Americans: TV Review

In its second season, “The Americans” proves that it’s safe to trust in the greatness on display last season, as the writers ratchet up the tension and deftly broaden the story.

One of television’s finest dramas, The Americans, returns tonight on FX for its second season and almost immediately answers a nagging question that haunts all ambitious, claustrophobic thrillers: Can this series get even better or will it go off the rails as the story unspools?

Not only does The Americans get better – a nifty trick given how impressive season one was – but it deepens along the way and confidently asserts the narrative abilities of creator, writer and executive producer Joe Weisberg and executive producer and writer Joel Fields. Nothing calms the worries of critics (and fans) like visual evidence of a sure hand (or hands, in this case). Look no further than Homeland for the most recent example of a great series (season one) going completely sideways (season two) and then into a ditch (season three). In a television landscape where there’s an excess of top-tier brilliance, never have the strengths and pitfalls of the medium – that it provides a platform for an ongoing, multi-hour, multi-season story – proven so deadly to maintaining greatness.

It would be so easy to look away, to look elsewhere, if The Americans faltered. That’s the beauty of modern-day television – we are blessed with an abundance of choices, so by God don’t trip up and lose the confidence or interest of your audience, because they’ll turn the channel. Continue reading The Americans: TV Review

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Americans Post Mortem: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and EPs Explore the Bloody Season 2 Premiere’s Big Twists, Lingering Questions

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