‘The Americans’ Reunion: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and More Recall Behind-the-Scenes Highlights and Hijinks From the FX Spy Drama
As seasoned espionage pros, they didn’t give up much, and they didn’t indulge in too much nostalgia.
But for an hour or so on Wednesday evening, five core players of “The Americans” reunited in Midtown Manhattan to share stories and spread a few compliments for work they did together on the highly lauded FX series. To mark the 10th anniversary of the spy drama’s debut, stars Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich were joined by showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields for a lively reunion conversation hosted by the Paley Center for Media.
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Fields reminded his colleagues that Superstorm Sandy made a surprise guest appearance in “The Americans” pilot, turning the production schedule upside down just before they were scheduled to begin shooting the pilot for DreamWorks Television and Fox Television Studios.
Having to pivot quickly in the face of an unexpected challenge helped Fields and Weisberg bond as producers.
“First seasons are hard. And the first season of this show was hard. It started with Hurricane Sandy wiping out the sets the week before we’re supposed to start shooting,” Fields recalled. “And it sort of and it got harder from there. So we spent a lot of late nights into early mornings watching the sun rise together in our writers offices…And we were forged really what has become a great friendship and a great creative collaboration that continues to this day. So we just feel very lucky and blessed for that.”
“The Americans” featured Russell and Rhys as two long-con Soviet spies posing as a typical suburban Washington, D.C. couple in the early 1980s, complete with two U.S.-born children. Shot in New York, the series ran for six seasons, from January 2013 to May 2018. It was never a ratings barn-burner but its renown has grown in the streaming era. “The Americans” is consistently one of the most binged library series on the FX/Hulu platform.
Weisberg, the creator of the series whose real-life experience in the CIA helped inspire the show, noted how much television production and distribution has changed in a decade. “The Americans” premiered on FX two days before “House of Cards” set sail as Netflix’s first high-profile original series offering.
“There was something about that era. ‘The Sopranos’ had come out and set the stage for doing this kind of short, intense drama. We can already see that this was a very specific moment in time, and everything got a lot of attention,” Weisberg said. “It didn’t exist before, and it’s gone away. And I do think sometimes if we hadn’t have hit that moment we might not have been able to make the show at all. So it was very lucky.”
Weisberg and Fields, who most recently collaborated on the FX drama series “The Patient” starring Steve Carell, couldn’t say enough about the professionalism and esprit de corps that Russell and Rhys brought to the production as the leaders on the call sheet. Emmerich, who played FBI agent Stan Beeman, also praised his co-stars for creating a generous and collaborative atmosphere.
“I’ve done guest spots on shows where you don’t meet the stars until you’re rolling. And you’re lucky to get a hello out of them,” Emmerich said. “That was not our vibe, that was not our set. And it began with Keri and Matthew and Joe and Joel.”
Rhys, who now stars in the HBO drama “Perry Mason,” recalled the moment in the pilot when he knew the storytelling would have dimension for the unconventional couple of Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings (Rhys drew laughs from the crowd of ardent fans when for a split second he couldn’t remember the name “Phillip.”)
“The scene in the pilot in the laundry room when Phillip says ‘We could possibly defect.’ To me, it was a really good moment because you saw who this was. It was thrilling to kind of say, you know, ‘We could defect.’ And it was immediately like, how is that going to going to play out. So it was just set up so beautifully,” Rhys said.
Russell, who bowed in February with her first major series role since “The Americans” with the Netflix drama “The Diplomat,” knew “Americans” was making an impact when friends and fans alike were excited to speak to her about a memorable moment she had in Season 1 with her spy handler character played by Margo Martindale.
“I lot of times they’d say the episode where I get kidnapped and then I beat the shit out of Margo,” Russell said, to a roar from the crowd. “People would always say they’d be watching the episode and they’d be into it and it was interesting, but when that scene happened people were like ‘Whoa,’ they’re not lying.”
No exchange over the hourlong conversation captured the behind-the-scenes culture of “The Americans” like an anecdote shared by Fields. It made Rhys grin like a schoolboy.
“In the writers room we had photos of the cast members up, to help inspire us for the characters. Joe and I walk in there one day and – Matthew and Keri’s pictures have been defaced,” Fields said. “Someone has drawn devil horns on Matthew and a funny mustache on Keri. We called all the assistants in and we said, ‘Guys it’s all good and to have fun around the office is fine. But this is a professional and respectful place to work and we really need to know who did this.’ ”
Fields laughed as he remembered interrogating the assistants to discover that it had been Rhys’ handiwork. Meanwhile, the Welsh actor threw himself on the mercy of the crowd and his former executive producers.
“We’d had a boozy lunch,” he explained.
(Pictured top: “The Americans” executive producers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg with stars Keri Russell, Noah Emmerich and Matthew Rhys)
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