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 (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), 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 (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati).
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 (Noah Emmerich), 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 (for example, "Ivanovich" means "son of Ivan" and "Sergeevna" means "daughter of Sergei").
Main
Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings (Nadezhda), 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 (Mischa), 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 (season 1)
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 (main seasons 2–4; recurring season 1)
Susan Misner as Sandra Beeman, Stan's wife (main seasons 2–3, recurring seasons 1 and 4)
Alison Wright as Martha Hanson, Agent Gaad's secretary and Philip's informant (main seasons 2–4; recurring seasons 1 and 5)
Lev Gorn as Arkady Ivanovich Zotov, the KGB's Rezident at the Soviet embassy (main seasons 3–4; recurring seasons 1–2 and 6)
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 (main seasons 3–6; recurring season 2)
Richard Thomas as Frank Gaad, an FBI Special Agent and Stan's supervisor (main seasons 3–4; recurring seasons 1–2)
Dylan Baker as William Crandall, a Russian agent and biochemical warfare scientist (season 4)
Brandon J. Dirden as Dennis Aderholt, an FBI agent (seasons 4–6; recurring season 3)
Margo Martindale as Claudia, the Jenningses' second and fifth KGB handler (main season 6; recurring seasons 1–2, 4–5; guest season 3)
Recurring
Daniel Flaherty as Matthew Beeman (seasons 1–5), Stan and Sandra's son
Peter Von Berg as Vasili Nikolaevich (seasons 1–4), a former KGB Rezident
Derek Luke as Gregory Thomas (season 1; special appearance season 6), an American militant and Elizabeth's longtime lover
Wrenn Schmidt as Kate (season 2), the Jenningses' third KGB handler
Lee Tergesen as Andrew Larrick (season 2), a United States Navy SEAL blackmailed into working for the KGB
Michael Aronov as Anton Baklanov (seasons 2–4), an émigré Russian-Jewish scientist working on secret stealth technology
Karen Pittman as Lisa (seasons 2–4), a Northrop employee from whom Elizabeth is gleaning information
Kelly AuCoin as Pastor Tim (seasons 2–6), a pastor who heads the church which Paige Jennings attends
Frank Langella as Gabriel (seasons 3–5), the Jenningses' first and fourth KGB handler
Vera Cherny as Tatiana Evgenyevna Vyazemtseva (seasons 3–6), a KGB officer at the Rezidentura
Peter Mark Kendall as Hans (seasons 3–5), a South African member of the Jenningses' operational team
Julia Garner as Kimberly "Kimmy" Breland (seasons 3–6), the daughter of the head of the CIA's Afghan group, later head of the Soviet Division
Laurie Holden as Renee (seasons 5–6), Stan's girlfriend and later wife
Scott Cohen as Glenn Haskard (season 6), a member of a State Department negotiating team
Miriam Shor as Erica Haskard (season 6), 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:
The most interesting thing I observed during my time at the CIA was the family life of agents who served abroad with kids and spouses. The reality is that mostly they're just people going about their lives. The job is one element, and trying to depict the issues they face just seemed like something that, if we could bring it to television in a realistic way, would be new.
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 [setting] didn't seem like a good idea", adding, "People were both shocked and simultaneously shrugged at the [2010] 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 [originally,] 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.
Writing
Weisberg wrote the first two episodes of the series. Landgraf, who did not know Weisberg but liked the series, suggested to Weisberg that he work alongside Joel Fields as co-showrunner and the other head writer. Fields, in turn, persuaded TV writer Joshua Brand, with whom he had been working on a new pilot, to join the show's writing team as consulting producer shortly after the start; between them, Weisberg, Fields, and Brand wrote or co-wrote ten of the first season's thirteen episodes. In the second season, Gibson wrote one episode, and the show added other producers to the writing team: screenwriter and journalist Stephen Schiff, playwright and children's book author Peter Ackerman, and playwright Tracey Scott Wilson. All six of those writers (Weisberg, Fields, Brand, Schiff, Ackerman, and Wilson) remained with the show throughout its run. In addition, playwright and Americans story editor Hilary Bettis was added to the writing staff in season 5, and Americans script coordinator Justin Weinberger and showrunner's assistant Sarah Nolen were added to the writing staff in the sixth and final season.
Use of Russian language
The main characters of the show, despite being Soviet KGB officers, have to behave as American-born citizens, and therefore do not generally speak Russian on-screen. Other Soviet agents, immigrants, and—later in the show—ordinary Soviet people converse in Russian. Joe Weisberg explained that achieving believable Russian pronunciation was very important because the show was "so much centered on the world of the Russian Russians and the Russian illegals". In most cases, Russian was the native language for the actors playing Soviet characters. Other actors mastered their lines to sound almost native. Peter von Berg, cast as Vasili Nikolayevich, brought his expertise in Russian theater and skills as an accent coach to the role. Annet Mahendru, who portrayed Nina, has a Russian mother and is multilingual, speaking six languages. Mahendru praised Matthew Rhys for his efforts in delivering a few phrases in Russian, adding: "It's really important to everyone, so they're all trying, but it's a difficult language for all of us — even those of us who are fluent in it!"
Weisberg underscored the importance of the authenticity. According to him, there were "some perfectly good people [in the Rezidentura] who were easy to relate to even if you didn't believe in the cause they were serving". He concluded: "Once you bring that level of detail into a show, you can't do cardboard cutouts anymore. You're not in the realm of cliché. You will invariably build a real person."
Filming and locations
The series filmed in New York City at Eastern Effects Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn, with Brooklyn street locations in Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. Other shooting locations included: Prospect Park, Astoria, Washington Heights, Mamaroneck, Coney Island Avenue, Kew Gardens, Morningside Heights, Farmingdale, and Staten Island. Shooting of the pilot episode began in May 2012 and lasted until mid-June. Filming began for the rest of the first season in November 2012 in the New York City area. The production used location shots to simulate a dramatic setting of Washington, D.C. Early filming was delayed by flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy. Filming for the second season commenced in October 2013. Some scenes in the fifth and sixth seasons were filmed in Moscow.
Release
Broadcast
The Americans aired internationally in Australia on Network Ten, Canada on FX Canada, Ireland on RTÉ Two, and the United Kingdom on ITV. ITV dropped the series in January 2015 and did not acquire the third season. On July 20, 2015, ITV acquired seasons three and four for their subscription channel ITV Encore.