I didn’t mean to make this FX week on CraveOnline but with still more “Archer” and “Justified” interviews posting, now we have the season premiere of “The Americans.”
I got to sit down with one of the Americans himself, Matthew Rhys, before his panel before the Television Critics Association to catch up on his role as Phillip Jennings. If you want to find out what happens to Martha, Elizabeth and the kids, you’ll have to watch, but we discussed where things stand moving into the second season.
CraveOnline: When the series started, Phillip was actually trying to get closer to his fake wife. How is that going in season two?
Matthew Rhys: Well, that’s the beauty of turning things on their head is that he now, the onset of Phillip and Elizabeth discovering themselves as a real couple and the sort of difficult unity that comes with that, suddenly the Martha situation is an entirely different element to juggle. To a degree, there was small salvation in last year. There was a genuine warmth and reassurance and humanity that he got from Martha that he didn’t necessarily get from Elizabeth. This season, he is. He has great humanity, great empathy. I think the juggle of Martha conflicts him because she’s a woman of real feeling.
The scenes with Martha are lovely and I loved Alison Wright who I’d never seen before. How challenging does that get?
It is challenging in that you’re juggling a number of layers at any one time with Martha, in that you’re trying to be present so that you’re giving a credible presence to her. You’re with Martha in that moment and then you have Phillip’s sort of head whirring in the back, going, “Oh my God, everything that comes out of my mouth is a lie.” And also, he has this new path with Elizabeth. The duplicity of it all is affecting him.
He’s kind of three layers deep with Martha, playing this American husband playing a character undercover, neither of which are really him.
Yeah, it’s not just duplicitous.
Triplicitous?
It’s triplicitous. I’m going to steal that from you. It’s very true. You juggle a little with how much of one element do you show or play. Obviously in the moment you’re meant to be as real, honest and truthful as you can possibly be with Martha but there’s that thing. It’s like Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day where he’s absolutely present with Emma Thompson in the scene, but you see everything that’s going on in his mind. That’s the sort of juggle I struggle with as to how much should be seen.
How do you like the wig in the Martha scenes?
It’s so integral to the part and it practically is the part, with the glasses.
Is there a prosthetic also?
No, it’s just the wig. That wig really is Clark. It has that slightly strange Pavlovian effect that when it goes on, when I’m in the makeup chair, I kind of go, “Oh, okay. There he is. Here’s Clark now.”
Is there more physicality and action on “The Americans” in season two, or still the same?
More, I’d say. It’s slightly more muscular, the show. Everything is slightly amped and magnified, so yeah, everything’s pushed. That’s always an ever present sort of rhythm or sort of increasing rhythm. The drumbeat slowly gets faster, the bass drum.
You haven’t killed Claudia yet. Is Margo Martindale coming back?
I like the fact that you said yet. No, she’s still on the show, albeit in a different capacity as a result of last year. She is absolutely still no the show but not as much.
Can you say how many episodes she’s in?
I think about three.
I think that’s the limit when you’re on another show, you can guest on three.
Oh, is it?
Are there new story lines this season or mainly continuing the same ones?
No, there’s some very big new story lines. The entire season, there’s a very strong sense of a sort of danger off waiting to happen which gives it great tension throughout the whole thing. I think they realize as a couple, as two spies, I think that this career – I was going to say chosen career but it wasn’t chosen. It was chosen for them – isn’t sustainable. There’s an event that is incredibly shocking to them as a couple and they realize how mortal they are. This long deep cover has suddenly come to the surface.
So it starts with a bang?
Big. Big. Shocking and disturbing.
Is that part and parcel of a show like “The Americans?” There have to be those moments every few weeks?
I think so. I think just generally any drama series feels a certain pressure to keep a modern audience interested. I’m always slightly wary to use the word “spy thrillers” as a drama series because I don’t think it is that. I think it’s a relationship drama that hangs its hat on a coat hook of a spy thriller, but given what we do, I think there’s an expectation that every few weeks something relatively dramatic should happen.
Do you still have flashbacks where we see who they were when they were younger, getting recruited?
We do, we do. That’s still informing us as to how they become the people that they are and where their grave insecurities lie.
Do we see some things this season that inform things that happened last season?
Not necessarily. More about informing this season as to why certain relations formed the way they did.
How are the Jennings kids doing?
Well, that’s the greater element to it all and that’s the great focus of this season, the children. With the onset of their age, there comes this great inquisitiveness and intelligence as to what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and why they’re away from home so much, which is good because a number of people did say, “Don’t your kids wonder where you are all the time?” That’s been addressed this season.
Do the kids have a larger role this year?
Yes, incredibly, much more present.
Do you have a lot of good scenes with Noah Emmerich as the Stan friendship continues?
Not as much as I’d like, because again, in that same way of the scenes with Martha, the scenes with him carry that duplicity. As much as you need to be present in order to be convincing, you sort of carry the burden of, not the elephant in the room because he’s unaware, but you carry the guilt of that obstacle like a hump, which I think makes it interesting. Everything you say, do, everything is second read.
Did you work with the same directors this year or did any new ones join “The Americans?”
Tommy Schlamme came back. Having Tommy back was a real feather in our cap and she shot our premiere episode fantastically. It’s a real joy to have him back. Then Dan Sackheim directed one of our episodes last year. He’s not our sort of producing director. John Dahl we have back now. That’s about it really.
So when a new director comes in, do they get “The Americans” right away? Do you help them along?
Very rarely do you have to help them. I think they’re meticulous in their research so they watch the first season a number of times and they’re very up to speed when they come in. You have to hit the ground running on this. You can’t do an hour in seven days and no know what you’re doing.
After the first season finale, how eager or antsy were you to get the first script this year?
You’re always intrigued. You leave off with your wife lying on a hospital gurney bleeding, I was very intrigued as to how it would pick up, but it did, very cleverly.
Did you shoot a movie in the hiatus of “The Americans?”
I did a three part drama for BBC which is coming out on PBS. It’s called “Death Comes to Pemberley” where I played Mr. Darcy.
Is that a Jane Austen novel that I’m not aware of?
It’s not. A famous crime writer by the name of P.D. James ostensibly wrote a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. It’s a crime thriller and then we shot that.
