A Conversation With The Americans Showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields

The Americans creator Joe Weisberg, left, and executive producer Joel Fields, right

Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

In The Americans, the new FX series that premiered Wednesday night, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two wholesome residents of an all-American suburb of Washington, D.C., circa 1981. But behind the facade of domestic drama, The Americans is an entirely different kind of show: The Jenningses are deep-cover KGB agents at the height of the Cold War. The series was created by Joseph Weisberg, who worked in the CIA?s directorate of operations from 1990 to 1994.

Slate talked with Weisberg (who is also the brother of Jacob Weisberg, the Slate Group?s editor in chief) and his fellow writer, executive producer, and showrunner Joel Fields about authenticity, history, and making viewers fall in love with murderous Russian spies.

Slate: Unlike any other espionage drama that I?m aware of on TV, this series was created by a former spy. I hear that Joe plays the ?spy card? when he feels that real spies wouldn?t do something the other writers are suggesting for the characters. Do you worry that viewers aren?t used to accurate portrayals of the spy world?

Joe Weisberg: I used to worry about that, but now I only worry about the other writers in the room mocking me. People are used to things they?ve seen on TV. If you showed the way things really work, it would be boring. Like police and war, so much of this work is just sitting around, punctuated by moments of extreme violence.

Joel Fields: There was a great day before we started shooting when Joe sat us down?the writers, Adam Arkin our producer/director, and actors Keri, Matthew, and Noah Emmerich?and took a half-hour with a white board explaining surveillance to us, teaching us how to know if you?re being followed when you?re driving a car, without anyone knowing you?re looking. And then we all went outside and got to practice traffic surveillance.

Weisberg: I had a great ulterior motive. The only way they would stop mocking me about the spy card is if I gave them spy cards. But coming up in our third episode, we have a surveillance sequence that, for my money, is done more accurately and in a more interesting way than any surveillance sequence I?ve seen before.

Slate: Are there any other areas, other than surveillance, where you feel you had more realism than the typical TV/movie version of the spy world?

Weisberg: General tradecraft stuff. What we call communications, which is using signals to contact each other. Dead drops and the way agents are run and handled. A lot of what you see of spies in TV and movies has to do with blowing things up. In the real world, there?s a lot more recruiting and handling and running agents?which is all about relationships and human drama, which lends itself very well to a television show.

Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings and Matthew Rhys as Phillip Jennings in The Americans

Photo by Craig Blankenhorn/FX

Slate: Homeland faced a backlash in Season 2 around realism and credibility. Is your show a response to Homeland?s having lost track of the real world?

Weisberg: I twist myself up in knots thinking about that. In a way, it?s all about what feels real, what you accept as real. I read a lot of criticism of Homeland where people said, ?How would she ever be able to get to walk around headquarters when she?s just a visitor?? I worked at headquarters for four years, and I was leading the charge. I was outraged. And then at one point, I remembered, ?You know what? There was a special badge for visitors who don?t need an escort. And Carrie would be someone who maybe would have been given one of those badges. Actually, crazily enough, that might be realistic.? But it doesn?t matter that I know that, because it seems totally unrealistic.

What matters is how it feels. John le Carr? says he doesn?t strive for realism, he strives for authenticity, which he defines as what feels authentic. He fully accepts that his novels are not in the least bit realistic, but he tries to make them feel real. You make your own choice?are you going to suspend disbelief or not? I willingly and happily suspend disbelief. I love Homeland.

Slate: I?m fascinated by Philip and Elizabeth?s relationship. I wonder if the biggest challenge to their survival will come from outside?from the FBI?or from inside their marriage.

Fields: The Americans is at its core a marriage story. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you?re struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=1d24f62fd895a56762ccc57c0c38970d

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