Category Articles & Interviews

Joe Weisberg, creator of FX’s The Americans, was looking for something specific when casting the early-’80s undercover Soviet spy/suburban DC housewife Elizabeth Jennings: a thirtysomething who could be alternately frigid and hotheaded, sexually enticing yet detached, good with a firearm but bad with a skinned knee. Out of nearly 100 actresses, one, famous for playing a lovesick coed with corkscrew curls, stood out. “If you’ve seen her in Waitress, you know that Keri Russell can inhabit anyone you ask her to,” says Weisberg. Case in point: In The Americans’ pilot, the 37-year-old Felicity alum, clad in a leather bustier and platinum blond wig, performs a sex act on an intelligence-spilling U.S. government employee. A few scenes later, in high-rise Guess stovepipes and a violet scoop-neck, she mechanically clears breakfast plates while husband Phillip (Matthew Rhys)—also a KGB operative—cracks jokes with their two young children. “More than anything, it’s a show about a complicated marriage,” says Russell. “Elizabeth isn’t a bad mother. She just doesn’t have the emotional tools to deal with her kids.”

The real-life couple on which the series is based, who gathered classified information on the U.S. for 10 years, was arrested in 2010 and deported back to Russia. Still, last season an average of 3.4 million viewers championed the Jennings each week—one of the highest-ever ratings for a first-year FX drama (season two premieres February 26). Not that loving morally ambiguous characters is anything new. We’ve justified Tony Soprano’s narcissism, recast Walter White’s megalomania as paternal instinct, and pardoned Nicholas Brody for murdering the vice president. But are we willing to celebrate a woman who values her anti-American ideals over her family?

There’s been a lot of discussion about unlikable women on TV recently: Mad Men’s Betty Draper and Breaking Bad’s Skyler White have been subjected to countless online burn books, but never has this kind of female taken top billing. “We don’t want to think that the mom gave a blow job in a hotel room and then went home to make school lunches,” Russell says. “But why not? Men do it all the time.” At first it feels strange, almost comedic, to hear a soft-spoken homemaker deliver lines like, “I’m sorry I didn’t kill you. That’s my apology.” But as we go deeper with Elizabeth—who was raped by an officer during training, forced into an arranged marriage by her agency, and sometimes, late at night, listens to a tape of a woman speaking in Russian and cries—she stops being a pretty mom with a secret and becomes a martyr with a family. And therein lies her potency: She refuses to let chromosomes—or a painful backstory—inform conviction. They, like the men she seduces, are assets. And that self-control is a welcome contrast to a lovestruck CIA agent who morphs from clever to cloying each week. Russell agrees: “I get my armor on—my eyeliner, my tight clothes—and my temperature drops a bit.” What’s cooler than being cool? Ice-cold.

Source: http://www.elle.com

On the second season of “The Americans,” viewers will meet Record Girl and Scary Ice Skater. But the show’s two stars, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, are most excited that Fernando is making another appearance.

It’s not the norm for actors to name their wigs, but as viewers of FX’s spy thriller have come to know, these are no ordinary hairpieces. Some have even gone as far as to declare them “the real stars” of the show. In their duplicitous double agent lives, Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings don many disguises, which have attracted as much attention as the drama’s fine writing and performances.

Russell gets it: “Oh yeah, there’s been some great wigs. Some bad wigs. Some embarrassing wigs,” she told TODAY during an interview. “We name them all.”

For example? “This season, I’ve had Record Girl,” she said. “She’s one of the bad ones — this sort of short black, kind of Winona Ryder-y with very big eye makeup. Kind of an innocent Goth girl. Then there’s Scary Ice Skater — it’s a whipped-out Dorothy Hamill and I’m supposed to be very menacing. And we kept looking at it going, ‘This is not scary. This is just bad.’ We do laugh a lot. We name all of Matthew’s, too. Our favorite is Fernando. We’ve decided he’s a flamenco teacher and he only talks in a Spanish accent when he’s in it.” Continue reading More of ‘The Americans’ means more danger, sex and yes, wigs

“The Americans” tells the story of an arranged marriage, and in a way is the product of one.

FX unveiled the second season premiere Monday night at New York’s Paris Theater, two days ahead of its Feb. 26 television debut. Set in the 1980s, “The Americans” is the story of Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings (played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), two undercover KGB agents posing as a suburban married couple. The series was created by former CIA officer turned screenwriter Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields. Weisberg said at the premiere that when he and Fields were paired together to develop his idea for “The Americans” two years ago, it felt, at first, like as much of an arranged marriage as Phillip and Elizabeth’s union, though one with much less sex and violence.

Weisberg and Fields were introduced by FX president John Landgraf, who praised the show’s creative team and marketers, before pointing out that the first season of “The Americans” was nominated for more awards by the Television Critics Association than any other 2013 rookie, and won for Outstanding New Program. He proudly read glowing excerpts from some advanced reviews of the second season, taking particular relish in one that called “The Americans” superior to that other acclaimed sophomore show, “House of Cards.”

The premiere episode didn’t skimp on either the violence or sex, and finds Elizabeth and Phillip struggling to keep their family safe as the Cold War continues to intensify. At the end of the last season Elizabeth and Philip went from agents pretending to be a loving couple to being an actual couple, and Rhys said the season will see them work together to stay one step ahead of their political adversaries.

“As a result of them becoming a real relationship, the other elements of the job that as of now haven’t become a problem becomes enormous,” he said. “What’s fantastic is it afflicts both the domestic and espionage worlds. Phillip and Elizabeth are a united front now. (Season two) is dealing with the danger that is intensifying by the minute.”

For a show about espionage and secrets, Rhys and Russell were both appropriately tight lipped about what to expect for season two, but Russell couldn’t help but talk about about her favorite upcoming plot, and how it relates to the larger themes of the season.

“Without spoiling things, (teenage daughter) Paige gets involved in this very seemingly innocuous… hobby, and any other parent would love it and think she’s such a good kid,” Russell said. “And I love that the character of Elizabeth is a crazy, hardcore spy, but then she’s losing her shit. This teenager is unraveling her because this teenager has this new hobby!

“I think if last season was a metaphor on marriage, to me anyway, this season to me is really a metaphor on family, and again as much as we’re talking about the 1980s and spies and all that stuff, to me the important throughlines are really protecting your family,” Russell said. “Maybe it was naive, but I think this is the first time Elizabeth has really seen the danger that her children are in. And now that she is more vulnerable-slash-messier in her work, because of her new vulnerability and intimacy with Phillip and her family, I think it endangers her kids more.”

The cast and crew headed to the after-party at the Plaza Hotel following the screening.

Source: http://variety.com

The cast of Cold War spy drama “The Americans” stepped out of disguise and onto the red carpet at The Paris Theatre in Manhattan Monday night for the show’s second season premiere. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, who costar as KGB spies paired together through a government-arranged marriage, have embraced the sartorial espionage of the show.

Rhys, clad in a black Armani suit for the screening, disclosed his favorite on-screen undercover look: “I named him Fernando,” the actor said, going on to say he has a thing for giving all the different disguises their own full-blown personas. “I gave him a whole Spanish back story — flamenco teacher, all of that. The ponytail, mustache, small goatee….He’s a hit, Fernando.”

“Everyone loves Fernando,” Russell reiterated, echoing Rhys’ sleek red-carpet style in an all-black ensemble: a Balenciaga silk top and Saint Laurent jacket and pants, slipped over a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos. “I never get cute disguises. Mine are always strangely androgynous,” the actress whimpered. “But I love my costumes on the show. Sleek trousers and a cat eye, that’s my armor. It feels very feminine and strong.”

And what about those high-waisted Jordache jeans ubiquitous on the show?

“Oh my god, the high-waisted pants,” Russell laughed. “Unanimously, every single girl goes into a fitting and Jenny [Gering, the show’s costume designer] pulls out those pants and it’s like, ‘I can’t get those on, there’s no way.’ And Jenny’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah you can. Lay down, keep zipping them up.’”

Russell, who dashed out of the theater after the producer’s preshow remarks, reappeared an hour later at the after party across the street at The Palm Court in The Plaza hotel. Members of the cast — Noah Emmerich, Alison Wright, Richard Thomas and Susan Misner — congregated at the reserved tables in the back of the room. A solo saxophone player roamed the dance floor, breaking up the monotony of predictable tunes — Eighties Michael Jackson and the inescapable Daft Punk and Robin Thicke anthem.

Source: http://www.wwd.com/

Keri Russell sits down to speak with a small gathering of international press on the set of “The Americans,” which returns for a second season Feb. 26 on FX Canada.

You don’t have to be a spy — or even play one on TV — to know something is up. The reporters seem charmed out of their boots, downright perky.

Then she gets it: the press has just met her adorable, Canadian-born co-star, Holly Taylor.

“Holly girl,” says Russell. “She’s so lovely.”

Born in Nova Scotia, Taylor plays Russell and Matthew Rhys’ teenage daughter Paige Jennings on the edgy FX spy drama. The series is set during the cooling off of the Cold War in the early ’80s.

Russell is told that, for a young actress who had never really done a press conference before, Taylor was very impressive.

Russell — who’s been acting since she was a child herself — remembered how “smart and composed” Taylor was in her audition. The director had asked Russell to come in and read a few lines opposite a number of girls. “And she comes in and she’s just so — there’s her milky skin and those brown, brown eyes and she was just so funny and composed. She’s wonderful.” Continue reading Keri Russell lauds young ‘Americans’ co-star

Season 2 of “The Americans” is about more than KGB spies and sex in bars. The critically-acclaimed FX show starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as undercover Soviet operatives who pose as travel agents in mid-’80s Washington, D.C. returns for a second season on Feb. 26. Season 1 introduced viewers to Elizabeth and Philip Jennings’ intricate web of lies. But Season 2 will further complicate the deceptive honey trappings, geopolitical conflicts and — oh yeah — those insane wigs.

On a recent visit to “The Americans” set in Brooklyn, executive producer Joel Fields and members of the cast spoke freely about the portrayal of women, sex and violence in Season 1 and what we can expect from the super secretive Season 2.

Elizabeth turns her focus to her family. She wants to be a better parent.
At the end of Season 1, viewers saw Elizabeth (Keri Russell) get shot and since then, she’s been in recovery. Russell teased that in one of the opening scenes of Season 2, she’s in a dramatic, messy and violent scene. “She spends all these months away and just wants to get back because it’s [her son] Henry’s birthday,” she said. “She’s involved in this really sketchy scene and that’s her entrance back into reality, but then they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s good to be home for his birthday.'” In another early scene in Season 2, Russell said Elizabeth does something “really hardcore” to her daughter Paige. “It involves waking her up and making her clean in the middle of the night,” she said. “The direction was like, ‘Yeah, just a Russian mother.” Even though this doesn’t sound like the best parenting advice, she’s trying. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ Season 2 Refocuses On Family, But Is Full Of Sex & Wigs