FAST FRIENDS
Tover Russia and the administration lends extra resonance to the Cold War drama “The Americans,” which kicked off its fifth season last month. But producers and say it has no influence on what they do with the show.
“The truth is, we don’t think about it that much,” Fields told us at the FX Network upfronts last week. “Certainly it may change the audience’s experiences of the show and it may give the audience some different ideas about what it means to have an enemy today.
“If so, we guess that’s good stuff to contemplate, but believe it or not, although there’s a lot of politics around the lunch table, in our writers group we really think about the characters when we’re writing the show.” The FX show stars and
(photo) as Soviet sleeper agents living in the United States in the early 1980s. The drama recently got a thumbs-up from an important reviewer: one of the 10 real-life Russian “illegals” whose arrest by the FBI in 2010 inspired the show.
“It was very gratifying to hear that one of the actual illegals who was arrested a few years ago and is now in Russia had seen the show and apparently said publicly that the show really captured what the emotional experience was to be an illegal,” said Weisberg, a former CIA agent.
For that matter, Fields and Weisberg are pretty gratified by the response of regular viewers, which has gradually built into a deafening buzz.
“It’s been mind-blowing,” said Weisberg. “It started out with a positive reception but it just seemed to get bigger and better all along and I think it has now reached the point where it’s hard to believe. It’s so gratifying to work hard on something and get this response.”
So what can they tell us about the final season? In what year will it be set?
“Well we can’t tell you anything about anything because we’re very tightlipped about spoilers, but it will be after season five, I can tell you that,” said Weisberg.
You heard it here first, kids. “Manchester by the Sea” star is a dear pal of “Dear Evan Hansen” actor “We went for a run in Central Park the other day,” Hedges (inset) told us at the MCC Theater Gala. Though Hedges prides himself as the better runner, he concedes, “We both run very slow.” After working up an appetite doing “one mini-circle” through the park, the pair went out for sushi.