Caution: season two spoilers below.
FX’s hit period drama, The Americans, returns tonight at 10 pm, and if season two is any indication, we’re in for a wild ride. As Cold War-era KGB spies living in Washington, D.C., Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell) portrait one of television’s more complex and engaging marriages. Keeping their cover airtight is a near-impossible feat while balancing relationships with spies and informants and playing mom and dad to 14-year-old Paige (Holly Taylor) and 12-year-old Henry (Keidrich Sellati).
Last we saw Philip and Elizabeth, they were told it was Paige’s turn to join the KGB family. The news of what’s referred to as “this thing with Paige” is the driving familial narrative of season three, which packs no punches with its twisty, dread-laden script. Rotten Tomatoes got to speak with Rhys about playing Philip in this taut spy thriller’s anticipated third outing, and we gathered five things to know about Paige’s budding relationship with the KGB.
Philip has always been more humane than Elizabeth, and despite having loyalties to Mother Russia, he is dead-set on not bringing Paige into their cause. “I think he’s absolutely immovable in that respect,” Rhys said. “There’s nothing on God’s green earth that could make him acquiesce to the fact that [Paige] should join the KGB or, indeed, the intelligence world.’ Philip was also inducted into the KGB as a young teen, and knowing how the decision has molded his every move since, he cannot imagine his only daughter being beholden to the same life sentence. “It’s not a job you can quit overnight or walk away from, and he doesn’t want her to have to do the many awful things that he has to do in order to stay alive and, therefore, keep the family alive,” Rhys insisted.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, is blinded by her loyalties, and marital tension unsurprisingly comes to a front this season. But Rhys maintains that although their marriage is mandated, there is also an incredible amount of love, passion, and devotion that flows through it. “Their relationship and life together is so complex… They only have each other in this situation. There’s no one else they could turn to. There’s no one else who can empathize or sympathize like the other one can. Therefore, in that respect, they’re sort of beholden and dependent on each other.”
One could argue that Paige’s budding interest in the church and the potential for her to join the KGB both speak to her impressionability at such a young age. But Rhys concedes that, while that argument may hold water and the KGB does offer similar community, it also lends to a life of violence. “Ultimately, [the KGB is] a communal, supportive group that has a strong belief, which is the same [as the Church], but there’s no risk of being killed or hurt or imprisoned as a direct result of your job.”
Paige’s desire for that community also triggers guilt within both Phillip and Elizabeth as parents because it highlights their absence from their children’s lives. “It’s a very real reason why [Paige] sought that support and that comfort from a group elsewhere.”
Rhys also revealed that more will be learned this season about Elizabeth’s relationship with her mother by way of flashback. “I think Philip and Elizabeth both suffered from absent parents in one respect or the other… Elizabeth’s and the relationship with her mother obviously parallels and mirrors that with Paige.”
This show is nothing if not attuned to the emotional intricacies between family members and loved ones, and that includes jealousy and sibling rivalry when one or the other gets preferential treatment. Rhys said that watching Henry unfold this season in light of Paige’s predicament will prove especially interesting. “There’s this kind of deliberate sort of silent watching and listening from Henry throughout the season; I’m very interested as to how that will manifest itself in him,” Rhys said. “That kind of absence he feels and the sort of dysfunction and the distance will have to sort of come out in some form or another.”
“It’s sort of like having a silver back gorilla come onto the set in the best way possible,” Rhys said of his time working with Langella. “He’s this dominant, physical, mental, emotional presence that kind of stiffens and straightens everyone’s back and lifts everyone’s game.”
Of Langella’s character, Gabriel, Rhys revealed that he’s an old friend who was instrumental in Philip and Elizabeth’s KGB training and that their shared history is a point of tension in Gabriel and Philip’s colliding beliefs regarding Paige’s KGB induction. “Philip is isolated from [Elizabeth and Gabriel] and feels betrayed, and that is sort of the bigger arc for him and Gabriel, that sense of betrayal and conflict in the fact that he doesn’t want his daughter to follow his footsteps.”
By most counts, Taylor holds her own with veteran actors Russell and Rhys. Luckily, Rhys gushed, the gifted young actress doesn’t have the ego to match. “I always hate it when actors do this, but with regard to [Taylor], I can say with absolute sincerity she’s one of the sweetest, nicest, most sincere people I’ve ever had the fortune to meet,” Rhys said. ?I think it serves her incredibly well because what it brings to her part, and especially with these storylines, is an incredible sense of truth.” And apparently, she also knows how to spit a good verse. ?If you have the opportunity to talk to her you should ask her to rap for you.”
Season three of The Americans premieres tonight on FX at 10 pm. See reviews here.
