The series "Americans", whose actors speak a lot of Russian, was favorably received by an audience of Western espionage fans. The FX cable channel has already signed a contract for the sixth and, apparently, final season of the project.
Series Creation
The idea to create a television movie about Soviet counterintelligence came to Joe Weisberg not by chance. At one time, he served in the CIA and was confronted with "red agents." According to him, "almost all of them were educated and intelligent people, can not be compared with the current Muslim fanatics."
After completing the service, Joe began writing scripts. He participated in the creation of such series as "Struggle" and "Collapsed Skies." In “Americans”, Weisberg proved himself as the executive producer of the project.
Film lovers and critics liked the series. This is primarily due to the fact that the characters of the characters are perfectly spelled out in the script. It is interesting to watch their mental torment, as well as to anticipate the intrigue - agents will be revealed or not.
Season 1 of the series "Americans" attracted a huge number of viewers to the screens. Then the ratings began to fall a little, but by the beginning of season 2 the project again gained popularity.
Short story
The plot of the series "Americans" is built on the interaction of two main characters - Phillip and Elizabeth. They are married, raise two wonderful children and are busy expanding their own business.
But all this is just a cover. In fact, they are agents of the Soviet Union, Mikhail and Nadezhda, who settled in the US capital several years ago. All this time they have been conducting espionage activities in favor of their country. And everything would be fine if a certain Stan had not become their neighbor. He is an FBI agent, and tries to expose spies.
In addition to the main storyline, the series constantly contains an analysis of the feelings and emotions of heroes who really live like spouses and begin to fall in love with each other.
The series, in fact, affects the fate of many foreign residents who for many years could not speak their native language, tell children about their origin and had many other problems ...
Matthew Reese
The male lead is not a native American. Matthew Reese is a native of Wales.
Reese began his acting career in England on the stage. Then he began to be invited to small roles in television series. Feature films with his participation began to appear after 2000. These were the paintings "On guard of death", "Love and other disasters" and "Forbidden love". Matthew also participated in the TV series "Brothers and Sisters", playing one of the main roles for 5 seasons.
The hero of Reese - Phillip Jennings - was initially not too clear for the actor. To better prepare for the role, Matthew even went on a week-long internship at the CIA.
The Welshman’s ability for instant reincarnation and undoubted talent brought Riesa the nominations for Personal Achievements in Drama and for Best Actor from the Television Critics Association in 2013.
Keri Russell
Phillip Elizabeth's imaginary wife in the series "Americans" Keri Russell played flawlessly.
Keri is a Native American. She began her career as a dancer in the show program "Mickey Mouse Club".
The first appearance in the movie took place in the comedy "Honey, I Enlarged the Baby." This was followed by work in more serious paintings - "Seventh Heaven", "We were soldiers", "Mission Impossible-3" and "Planet of the Apes: Revolution."
For the role of Elizabeth, the actress was chosen by the president of the FX channel. He explained to Keri that she should play so that the audience fell in love with the heroine, who first causes some rejection. And Russell coped with this task perfectly.
In the personal life of the actress, not everything was so successful. In 2007, she married Shane Diri. The couple had two children - son River and daughter Will. But after 5 years, the marriage broke up.
Just at that time, the shooting of the series "Americans" began. Actors Russell and Reese met at the cinema site and have not parted so far in life. In May 2016, the couple had a son, Sam, who was the first child for Reese.
Noah Emmerich
For the role of FBI employee Stan Beeman, director Daniel Seckheim invited the colorful actor Noah Emmerich.
Officially, Noah has been in films since 1993, when the movie "The Last Movie Hero" was released. Other famous films with his participation - "The Truman Show", Pride and Glory "," Beautiful Girls ".
In the series Noah Emmerich began acting a little later. He has worked on New York Police, White Collar, and The Walking Dead projects. For his role in the latter, he was nominated for the Saturn Award in 2011 as the “Best Guest of the Project”.
Stan Beeman lives across from the Jennigs. He sees how parents are trying to solve problems with children, finances and their personal ones. And for a long time, Stan does not even imagine who his charming neighbors really are ...
Background composition
Actors of the series "Americans", performing not the main, but significant characters, were also selected with particular care.
So, the mentor of agents Cloudia is played by Margot Martindale, who was awarded an Emmy for participating in the series Justice.
Children of the Jennings family are performed by young actors Holly Taylor (Page) and Cadrich Selatti (Henry). KGB resident Nina Krylova was perfectly played by Annette Mahendra. The actress is fluent in 7 languages, her father is Russian.
In the series there are quite a lot of immigrants from Russia. This is Lev Gorn in the role of Zotov, Costa Ronin (Burov), Vera Chernysheva in the role of intelligence officer and Michael Aronov - Soviet scientist Baklanov.
In 2017, Russell and Reese became Golden Globe Award nominees in the Best Actress and Best Actor roles, respectively.
Reasons for the popularity of the series
There are several reasons why watching the series can be recommended not only to fans of spy thrillers, but also to connoisseurs of quality acting.
The main ones are as follows:
- "Americans" is a prominent representative of the famous drama series about agents behind enemy lines. Against the background of many monotonous "soap operas", the project looks more preferable, although devoid of mass love of fans. The reason for this is the creators' emphasis on the inner world of heroes with the virtual absence of special effects. To watch this series, you need a certain supply of knowledge and your own thinking.
- The series "Americans" (season 1 especially) is distinguished by the quality of spoken Russian. Weisberg did not try to make caricatures of Soviet agents. He penetrated their souls and strove to show the viewer the eternal struggle of man with his own passions.
- Atypical for the genre actors of the series "Americans" attract the audience with their game. The creators very accurately selected the performers of both the main and secondary roles.
- Today, projects covering the 80s are gaining more and more popularity. Apparently, this is due to the rethinking of the events of that time by most members of society.
- The series is relevant now more than ever. It reflects problems identical to the current ones - fear of a nuclear explosion, war between the USA and Russia, etc. Along with this, family troubles and their resolution are of interest at all times.