Matthew Rhys On New Role: "This Couldn't Get Any Different From Dear Old Kevin"

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Matthew Rhys On New Role: "This Couldn't Get Any Different From Dear Old Kevin"

Posted by Jim Halterman, Entertainment Reporter on January 16, 2013

Matthew Rhys in FX's The Americans

We watched him for years on Brothers & Sisters, but actor Matthew Rhys has a new role that is worlds apart from his long-running role as gay brother Kevin Walker. In FX’s new spy thriller The Americans, the Welsh actor plays Phillip Jennings, husband to Felicity alum Keri Russell’s Elizabeth and living in 1981 suburbia with their two kids.

What we find out in the pilot episode (airing January 30th), however, is that Phillip and Elizabeth are Soviet KGB agents who have spent the last fifteen years pretending to be Americans.

To find out more about the new series and, of course, glean some of his thoughts on his B&S past, AfterElton grabbed a few minutes with the uber-friendly (and dreamier-than-ever) Rhys at Fox’s recent Television Critics Association All-Star party.

AfterElton: Obviously this is very different from your last TV gig. Was this role a big adjustment for you, or did you just jump right in?
Matthew Rhys: That was an enormous draw. It’s an actor’s dream, really, to play a wide variety of parts and this couldn’t get any different from dear old Kevin.

AE: We miss Kevin, but this is such a good role, too!
MR: Yes! It was perhaps a dream to step into something so wildly varied.

AE: You and Keri have a great chemistry but it’s complicated how your characters were thrown together for their mission. Is there love between the two of them?
MR: I think what makes it interesting in the beginning with the pilot is you’ve clearly been watching this forced marriage evolve over fifteen years. At the point we meet them you see that there are real emotions coming into play which I think sets off for an interesting journey.

Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are married KGB agents on The Americans

AE: Is it safe to say it was those layers to the characters that drew you in more than the action elements?
MR: It was exactly that. I think it’s wonderful that this concept at its heart is a spy thriller but, as you said, I think it’s far deeper and more complex than that because of the relationship element to it.

Rhys (here with B&S co-star Luke MacFarlane) never saw playing a gay role as a negative.

AE: How are you with the guns you get to use on the show? Was that tough to get used to?
MR: All that I find is like being twelve years old running around in your garden again. You fit straight back into it! You’ve drilled those things a million times in your head through your boyhood, and all of a sudden you’re acting it out!

AE: What do you hope audiences take from watching The Americans?
MR: I think it’s a type of show that a boyfriend and girlfriend can watch together and they’ll both be rewarded.

AE: You were playing a gay character for a long time and obviously it hasn’t hurt your career. Looking back, that was a very mainstream show and audiences loved it and Kevin.
MR: I’m incredibly, incredibly proud of that and most specifically what Jon Robbie Baitz set out to do. He was incredibly strong about this. [Kevin] is not to be defined by his sexuality and no coming out story. He’s the lawyer brother who happens to be gay. The other thing, and I’ve been asked so many times, were you scared to be pigeonholed, which I find mildly offensive in some way because I don’t really even know what that means. But the fact that this project came along, I hope disproves that slightly odd theory, which I always find strange.


The Americans premieres on FX on January 30th ET at 10pm.