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If the only images you have of Keri Russell are as the sweet young entertainer who went from the “The Mickey Mouse Club” to “Felicity,” you’ve not seen her FX channel series, “The Americans.” Russell’s traded her good-girl image for that of a hardened Communist spy who will use any weapon — ANY weapon — to get what she wants.

The second season of the FX series, starting Wednesday, throws Russell back into action as it picks up in the early 1980s during the Cold War. Russell and Matthew Rhys play two KGB spies who live the American dream as a typical suburban Washington, D.C., couple. Their lives bounce between parent-teacher conferences and deadly espionage encounters.

The role is a major divergence than anything Russell has played before, but she doesn’t think of the series in those terms.

“I guess I’m not thinking about it being different, but it is interesting,” said Russell, who wore a pair of white pants so tight she looked like an extra for a remake of “Grease II.” “I find myself with this role being more exposed. I enjoy the vulnerability and sexuality of her and continually interested in mining the relationships. It’s all very fun.”

These spies engage in a lot of sex, not so much for pleasure but as part of the job. Season two kicks off with sexual activity that breaks new ground for basic cable television. Russell is more comfortable with this disconnected form of sex than the more romantic variety played out in TV and films.

“The good thing about the sexuality in the show, at least where I’m coming at it from, is there is a gift in it not having to be 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,” Russell said. “So there is kind of a freedom in that, because it’s kind of messier or more direct than that.”

Russell looks at her role on “The Americans” as just another credit in a growing résumé. She admitted that because of the role — and maybe the fact that she’s a 37-year-old mother of two — she’s feeling a lot more grown up these days.

Playing a sexually charged, butt-kicking spy hasn’t changed the kind of jobs Russell’s being offered. But the way she feels about acting jobs is different.

“It’s changed my career because it’s interesting to me,” Russell said. “This second season will add to that because of the relationship with her family because she wants to be with them and engage with them. She’s going to be off-center this year and that’s interesting to play.”

The first season show averaged 3.4 million viewers, tying “Justified” as the most-watched first season of any FX drama series. Critics also loved the show, which received four Critics’ Choice Television Award nominations — the most of any first-year drama series.

In addition to the nomination for Best Drama Series, “The Americans” scored acting nods for Russell and Rhys, along with a supporting actor nod for Noah Emmerich.

Source: http://www.honolulupulse.com

Keri Russell surprised and impressed last year and turned her Felicity-crafted image on its head, as the tough as nails, intense Elizabeth Jennings on The Americans. The more hardline of the two undercover KGB agents at the center of the spy series, Elizabeth proved she would go as far as she had to in order to complete her mission, while we also saw her vulnerabilities and her confusion over the bizarre situation she and her husband Philip are in.

IGN TV: When we left off, Elizabeth and Philip had reconciled. As the season begins, are they doing well, or are this still some bumps there because they had so much trouble to work through last season?
Keri Russell: I think the main step forward is they are no longer questioning if they should be together as a couple. So they are a unified front decidedly now. But I think, for me, is what I loved most about last season was that it was sort of, at its best, a study of a marriage and the metaphor of marriage and I think this season is the study of a family embedded in this spy world to heighten the stakes. So they are a unified front, but now, for the first time, they are realizing — Elizabeth especially, because Phillip always had it — the threat of outside forces and the threat to their family, just [in terms of] violence. She’s seeing how fragile it all is for the first time, maybe naively. Again, like I did last year for the relationship and the marriage, I think those are such universal themes: fear for your children, sometimes they’re completely ungrounded, sometimes they are real, the influence of outside forces on your kids growing up, and the influence of outside forces on your relationship too. To me, the sense that I get is that it’s really a season about the family and keeping the family safe. Continue reading Keri Russell Talks The Americans: Season 2 – ”The Circle is Tightening Around Them”

Keri Russell still has that great hair, but as the deadly Soviet spy Elizabeth Jennings on “The Americans” she is a long way from the shy college coed she played on “Felicity” a decade and a half ago. Unlike either of the tightly wound characters, though, Russell is loose and personable.

The now 37-year-old actress does have something in common with Elizabeth, as she is the mother of two. Russell’s children are 6 and 2, younger than her TV children, 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 said.

That strange dynamic has made FX’s “The Americans” both a hit with fans and a critical success, with two Emmy nominations as well as being named the best new program by the Television Critics Association. Continue reading Keri Russell reflects on the second year of spying in ‘The Americans’