When J.J. Abrams was working on Felicity, he posed the question of what it would be like if the title character were actually a secret spy. This notion eventually lead to the idea that would become Alias, a series that (in its earlier years), focused on a grad school student who led a double-life as a spy. While it was Jennifer Garner who played that role, Abrams' idea does create an image of a curly-haired Keri Russell as a Sydney-Bristow-like spy. More than a decade later, Joe Weisberg's The Americans sort of fulfills that idea.
Russell's Americans character isn't a college student, but she is a secret spy. The FX drama series, which arrives next month, has Russell starring alongside Matthew Rhys as a pair of KGB spies in the 80s, posing as a married American couple in Washington DC. Their own kids don't know what they really are.
The latest teasers for the series give us a look at Russell in spy-mode. The first has her taking aim in what starts out as a Soviet-looking setting but soon shifts to another scene…
And in this one, we start it what looks like your typical suburban American household in the 80s, but then we see what's going on in another room…
Things not being what they seem appears to be the theme of FX's marketing strategy for this series, and I think it works. The previously released teaser shows a cozy suburban neighborhood and a house with red on it that - when viewed from the right angle - is actually the hammer and sickle featured on the USSR flag. Perspective plays a key factor, and that may be the case with this series as we see this couple trying to do their jobs and also present themselves as American as apple pie.
The Americans premieres Wednesday, January 30 at 10:00 p.m. ET on FX.
