The Americans


The Americans is an American period spy drama television series created by Joe Weisberg for FX. It aired for six seasons from January 30, 2013, to May 30, 2018. Weisberg and Joel Fields also served as showrunners and executive producers. Set during the Cold War, the show follows Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Soviet KGB intelligence officers posing as an American married couple living in Falls Church, a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. The couple combine their spying duties with raising their American-born children Paige and Henry.
The Americans also explores the conflict between Washington's FBI office and the KGB Rezidentura there, from the perspectives of agents on both sides, including the Jenningses' neighbor Stan Beeman, an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. The series begins in the aftermath of the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in January 1981 and concludes in December 1987, shortly before the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The show explores themes of marriage, identity, and parenthood, which were structured around the metaphorical connection between the Cold War and the Jenningses' marriage. The Americans was acclaimed by critics, many of whom considered it among the best television shows of its era; its writing, characters, and acting were often singled out. The series's final season earned Rhys the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, while Weisberg and Fields won Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series; it also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama. Margo Martindale twice won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her performances in the third and fourth seasons. It was one of the rare drama shows to receive two Peabody Awards during its run. It has since been named one of the greatest television series of all time.

Episodes

Cast and characters

The surnames of most of the Russian characters are not revealed. In scenes in the Soviet embassy, the characters address each other in a familiar but respectful manner, using given name and patronymic, without mentioning surnames.

Main

  • Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings, a KGB officer and wife of Philip. In comparison to Philip, Elizabeth's allegiance to the KGB and the Soviet Union, as well as the ideology of communism, is stronger and more straightforward.
  • Matthew Rhys as Philip Jennings, a KGB officer and husband of Elizabeth. Although loyal to his cause, Philip holds little animosity towards the United States. Philip is close friends with Stan Beeman. As Clark, one of his false identities, Philip romances Martha, an FBI secretary, to obtain classified information.
  • Maximiliano Hernández as Chris Amador, Stan's FBI partner
  • Holly Taylor as Paige Jennings, Elizabeth and Philip's daughter
  • Keidrich Sellati as Henry Jennings, Elizabeth and Philip's son
  • Noah Emmerich as Stan Beeman, an FBI counterintelligence agent and the Jenningses' neighbor. Unaware of the Jenningses' true nature, he is very close with the family and best friends with Philip.
  • Annet Mahendru as Nina Sergeevna Krilova, a clerical worker turned KGB agent at the Soviet Embassy, and Stan's former informant and lover
  • Susan Misner as Sandra Beeman, Stan's wife
  • Alison Wright as Martha Hanson, Agent Gaad's secretary and Philip's informant
  • Lev Gorn as Arkady Ivanovich Zotov, the KGB's Rezident at the Soviet embassy
  • Costa Ronin as Oleg Igorevich Burov, originally the Soviet embassy's Science and Technology officer, a privileged son of a government minister who was appointed thanks to his father's connections so he could enjoy the comforts of the United States; at the end of season 4, returned to the USSR after his brother's death, in the KGB at first and then at his father's ministry
  • Richard Thomas as Frank Gaad, an FBI Special Agent and Stan's supervisor
  • Dylan Baker as William Crandall, a Russian agent and biochemical warfare scientist
  • Brandon J. Dirden as Dennis Aderholt, an FBI agent
  • Margo Martindale as Claudia, the Jenningses' second and fifth KGB handler

    Recurring

  • Daniel Flaherty as Matthew Beeman, Stan and Sandra's son
  • Peter Von Berg as Vasili Nikolaevich, a former KGB Rezident
  • Derek Luke as Gregory Thomas, an American militant and Elizabeth's longtime lover
  • Wrenn Schmidt as Kate, the Jenningses' third KGB handler
  • Lee Tergesen as Andrew Larrick, a United States Navy SEAL blackmailed into working for the KGB
  • Michael Aronov as Anton Baklanov, an émigré Russian-Jewish scientist working on secret stealth technology
  • Karen Pittman as Lisa, a Northrop employee from whom Elizabeth is gleaning information
  • Kelly AuCoin as Pastor Tim, a pastor who heads the church which Paige Jennings attends
  • Frank Langella as Gabriel, the Jenningses' first and fourth KGB handler
  • Vera Cherny as Tatiana Evgenyevna Vyazemtseva, a KGB officer at the Rezidentura
  • Peter Mark Kendall as Hans, a South African member of the Jenningses' operational team
  • Julia Garner as Kimberly "Kimmy" Breland, the daughter of the head of the CIA's Afghan group, later head of the Soviet group
  • Laurie Holden as Renee, Stan's girlfriend and later wife
  • Scott Cohen as Glenn Haskard, a member of a State Department negotiating team
  • Miriam Shor as Erica Haskard, the ailing wife of Glenn Haskard for whom Elizabeth works as a home nurse and who coerces Elizabeth into art therapy

    Production

Concept

The Americans, a period piece set during the Reagan administration, was outlined by series creator Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer. The series focuses on the personal and professional lives of the Jennings family—a married couple of Soviet deep-cover agents placed in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1960s and their initially unsuspecting, American-born children. The story picks up in the early 1980s. The show's creator has described the series as being focused on the personal, despite its political content: "International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you're struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is." Joel Fields, the other executive producer, described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters' experiences during the Cold War.
In 2007, after leaving the CIA, Weisberg published An Ordinary Spy, a novel about a spy who is completing the final stages of his training in Virginia and is being transferred overseas. After reading Weisberg's novel, executive producer Graham Yost discovered that Weisberg had also written a pilot for a possible spy series. Yost read the pilot and discovered that it was "annoyingly good", which led to developing the show.
Weisberg says the CIA inadvertently gave him the idea for a series about spies, explaining, "While I was taking the polygraph exam to get in, they asked the question, 'Are you joining the CIA in order to gain experience about the intelligence community so that you can write about it later'—which had never occurred to me. I was totally joining the CIA because I wanted to be a spy. But the second they asked that question ... then I thought, 'Now I'm going to fail the test. The job at the CIA, which Weisberg later described as a mistake, has helped him develop several storylines in the series, basing some plot lines on real-life stories. He stated:
Weisberg was partially influenced to write a pilot script for the series by the 2010 events of the Illegals Program. His research material included notes on the KGB's Cold War left by Vasili Mitrokhin and conversations with some of his former colleagues at the CIA. However, in a departure from the circumstances involving the Illegals Program, he said he opted to set the story in the early 1980s because "a modern day didn't seem like a good idea", adding, "People were both shocked and simultaneously shrugged at the scandal because it didn't seem like we were really enemies with Russia anymore. An obvious way to remedy that for television was to stick it back in the Cold War." In a 2017 interview, Weisberg said that the show tried hard to resist the influence of the current political climate: "What you don't want is for people watching the show and thinking 'Oh, those clever writers, they did little things here and there that have to do with Donald Trump or what's going on with Russia today'".

Casting

Weisberg said he had no idea about who would star in the series before casting began. FX president John Landgraf had the idea to cast Keri Russell in the series. Leslie Feldman, the head of casting at DreamWorks, saw Matthew Rhys in a play and suggested him to Weisberg. Russell and Rhys had met briefly at a party years before, but were not fully introduced. They both were attracted to the series because of its focus on the relationship between their characters. Rhys said, "You have two people who have led the most incredibly strange life together with incredibly high stakes, in this scene of domesticity that is an absolute lie, and at the end of the pilot they're finding each other for the very first time."
Russell described the pilot script as "interesting", continuing, "It was so far from a procedural. And I didn't know that I wanted to do it... I never want to do anything. But I just couldn't stop thinking about it." Rhys said of his character, "When you meet him, he's at this great turning point in his life where everything's changing for him... It's the full package for an actor. It's a dream."
Noah Emmerich was initially hesitant about taking a role in the series. He explained: "The truth is, from the very beginning, I thought, 'I don't want to do a TV show where I carry a gun or a badge. I'm done with guns and badges. I just don't want to do that anymore.' When I first read it I thought, 'Yeah, it's really interesting and really good, but I don't want to be an FBI guy.'" His friend, Gavin O'Connor, who directed the pilot episode, convinced him to take a closer look at the role. Emmerich stated that he responded to the aspect of marriage and family.
After recurring in the first season, Susan Misner, Annet Mahendru, and Alison Wright, who play Sandra Beeman, Nina Krilova, and Martha Hanson, respectively, were promoted to series regulars beginning with season two. After recurring in the first two seasons, Lev Gorn, who plays Arkady Ivanovich, was promoted to series regular for season three.