Sex, Secrecy and Spying – Matthew Rhys on The Americans Season Three
The Americans – Season Three Premieres Wednesday, January 28th at 10:00 p.m. EST on FX
The Americans, FX’ intelligent, complex, character driven drama about two KGB officers planted in the US begins its third season with a bang. The spies, passing themselves off as ordinary middle class married couple with two children, are at a pivotal time in their personal and professional lives. It’s the 80’s Cold War, one of the most dangerous periods in political history as the US and the Soviet Union dance around one another, as the threat of nuclear war looms. Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings played by Welsh actor Matthew Rhys and his real-life partner Keri Russell are about to have their worlds turned upside down.
Describe your partnership on the show with Keri as Elizabeth.
Their relationship and life together is so complex that it’s gymnastic in a way that it can leap from something incredibly domestic as to do with the kids’ school and then to do with a mission and then the killing or disposing of a body. They jump these huge caverns, these leaps, varied and often and that’s true of their emotional life. Also, 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. It makes for this amazing relationship whereby they need each other, but they antagonize each other enormously and they fight and they’re poles apart at times, but ultimately, knowing that they absolutely will always need each other, so it makes for incredibly interesting play.
Are there elements of yourself in Phillip?
I’ve always appraised any character I approach with the characteristics built up of myself. I’m always interested in the truth of the character and the way I bring a truth to the character to make him, I hate to say, but it’s your own makeup that you bring to the character.
Philip seems to have sex more often than anyone else on TV!
That’s based on my life!
As an actor, though, is it ever easy shooting sex scenes?
No. It never gets comfortable. It never gets to a point where you go, “Oh, this is normal, this is natural,” you’re simulating sex with 40 of your closest friends. It’s bizarre, the random bizarreness of it. Then it’s magnified when you have to do the gymnastics of the Kama Sutra as well. It’s never .....
Read more at Monsters and Critics
The Americans, FX’ intelligent, complex, character driven drama about two KGB officers planted in the US begins its third season with a bang. The spies, passing themselves off as ordinary middle class married couple with two children, are at a pivotal time in their personal and professional lives. It’s the 80’s Cold War, one of the most dangerous periods in political history as the US and the Soviet Union dance around one another, as the threat of nuclear war looms. Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings played by Welsh actor Matthew Rhys and his real-life partner Keri Russell are about to have their worlds turned upside down.
Describe your partnership on the show with Keri as Elizabeth.
Their relationship and life together is so complex that it’s gymnastic in a way that it can leap from something incredibly domestic as to do with the kids’ school and then to do with a mission and then the killing or disposing of a body. They jump these huge caverns, these leaps, varied and often and that’s true of their emotional life. Also, 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. It makes for this amazing relationship whereby they need each other, but they antagonize each other enormously and they fight and they’re poles apart at times, but ultimately, knowing that they absolutely will always need each other, so it makes for incredibly interesting play.
Are there elements of yourself in Phillip?
I’ve always appraised any character I approach with the characteristics built up of myself. I’m always interested in the truth of the character and the way I bring a truth to the character to make him, I hate to say, but it’s your own makeup that you bring to the character.
Philip seems to have sex more often than anyone else on TV!
That’s based on my life!
As an actor, though, is it ever easy shooting sex scenes?
No. It never gets comfortable. It never gets to a point where you go, “Oh, this is normal, this is natural,” you’re simulating sex with 40 of your closest friends. It’s bizarre, the random bizarreness of it. Then it’s magnified when you have to do the gymnastics of the Kama Sutra as well. It’s never .....
Read more at Monsters and Critics
No comments:
Post a Comment