Count the Jennings’ kills, conquests and disguises
The Americans’ Philip and Elizabeth Jennings have spent five seasons donning disguises, seducing the opposite sex with “honeytraps” to get intel and carrying out orders from “the Center” to kill inconvenient targets.
Going into the sixth and final season of the FX drama Wednesday (10 ET/PT), have you stopped to wonder how many there were? We have, and we have the answers, exclusively.
Would it surprise you to know that, through the first five seasons, Philip and Elizabeth are in a (ahem) dead heat, with 16 “kills” apiece?
It sure surprised Matthew Rhys, who plays Philip. “I’m shocked about it, because we’ve always thought you do the killing and I do the crying,” he said to co-star and real-life partner Keri Russell in a joint interview last week.
Elizabeth’s tally includes John and Natalie Granholm, suspected Nazi collaborators in Massachusetts, in Season 5, along with a few randos such as Season 4’s “creep in parking lot.” Philip’s conquests include Timoshev, in the pilot episode, and last season’s Randy Chilton, a researcher at an Oklahoma lab whom they suspect of poisoning the Soviet grain supply. (His total does not include a submarine full of soldiers vanquished in Season 2.)
But Elizabeth has Philip beat when it comes to honeytraps, seducing a partner to glean information. She has sprung seven through five seasons, including a “pasty bureaucrat” in the pilot and Don Seong, a scientist with access to bioweapons who is drugged and made to believe he impregnated Patty, Elizabeth’s alias. Still, sometimes it’s tough to tell them apart: “Who’s Neal?” Russell asks, when shown a list that includes an unfamiliar conquest from Season 3.
Philip has honeytrapped only three women, including the best known, Martha (Alison Wright), an FBI secretary who is later expatriated to Moscow to protect her from prosecution. (His dalliance with teenage Kimberly remains chaste, for now, so it’s merely baited.)
Russell jokes that the disparity reflects the sexes: A single encounter with a man gets you all the information you need, she says, but “with girls, you’re like, you gotta hang out with them, you gotta buy them dinner.”
As for wigs and other disguises, Elizabeth sports several in the Season 6 premiere alone. Through five seasons, she wore 40 disguises (some more than once) to Philip’s 42.
“With girls, you’re like, you gotta hang out with them, you gotta buy them dinner.”
Keri Russell