Weisberg stated that he had no idea about who would star in the series before casting began. Early filming was delayed by flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy. The production used location shots to simulate a dramatic setting of Washington, D.C. Filming began for the rest of the first season in November 2012 in the New York City area. Shooting of the pilot began in May 2012 and lasted until mid-June. Yost read the pilot and discovered that it was "annoyingly good", which led to the beginning of motions to develop the show. But can you think of a better time than the '80s with Ronald Reagan yelling about the evil empire?" Development Īfter reading Weisberg's novel, An Ordinary Spy, executive producer Graham Yost discovered that Weisberg had also written a pilot for a possible spy series. At first, the '70s appealed to me just because I loved the hair and the music. An obvious way to remedy that for television was to stick it back in the Cold War. He stated that, unlike the circumstances involving the 2010 Russian spy ring, he had opted to set the story in the early 1980s because "a modern day didn't seem like a good idea", adding, "People were both shocked and simultaneously shrugged at the scandal because it didn't seem like we were really enemies with Russia anymore. His research material included notes on the KGB's Cold War left by Vasili Mitrokhin and conversations with some of his former colleagues at the CIA. Weisberg was partially influenced by the events of the Illegals Program to write a pilot script for the series. But the second they asked that question…then I thought, 'Now I'm going to fail the test.'" I was totally joining the CIA because I wanted to be a spy. Weisberg also said how the CIA inadvertently gave him the idea for creating a series around spies, explaining, "While I was taking the polygraph exam to get in, they asked the question, 'Are you joining the CIA in order to gain experience about the intelligence community so that you can write about it later – which had never occurred to me. He was interested in bringing that concept to television, with the idea of a family of spies, rather than just one person. Weisberg was fascinated by stories he had heard from agents who served abroad as spies, while raising their families. Working at the CIA, which Weisberg later described as a mistake, has helped him develop several storylines in the series, basing some plot lines on real-life stories, and integrating several things he learned in his training, such as dead drops and communication protocols. Joe Weisberg, creator and showrunner of The Americans The job is one element, and trying to depict the issues they face just seemed like something that, if we could bring it to television in a realistic way, would be new."
The reality is that mostly they're just people going about their lives. "The most interesting thing I observed during my time at the CIA was the family life of agents who served abroad with kids and spouses. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is." Executive producer Joel Fields described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters' experiences during the Cold War.
Sometimes, when you're struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. " The Americans is at its core a marriage story. Despite its spy setting, Weisberg set out to tell the story about a marriage. The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer.
Annet Mahendru as Nina Sergeevna, Agent Beeman's Soviet mole.Richard Thomas as Agent Frank Gaad, Special Agent In Charge of the FBI Counterintelligence Division.Keidrich Sellati as Henry Jennings, Elizabeth and Philip's son.Holly Taylor as Paige Jennings, Elizabeth and Philip's daughter.Maximiliano Hernández as FBI Agent Chris Amador.Matthew Rhys as Philip Jennings (Mischa), a KGB officer.Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings (Nadezhda), a KGB officer.