Keri Russell
speaker
39 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Keri Russell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you so much.
Deborah Kahn, who wrote it, sent me the script. It came through the normal channels. It was actually, it was the holidays. It was Christmas time. And it just so happened that I had three sets of grandparents downstairs in my house. I was cooking for them all. It was chaotic and fun and amazing. And, you know, I was clearly not shopping around for a new television show to join.
I read this and I just – it has this combination of – or Deborah's writing does I suppose – of this political fun intrigue and almost in the world of kind of war journalism and those kind of stories that interest me. And this world of civil servants and the State Department and the people who do those jobs that we just don't know that much about. And Deborah, she writes about the minutia of life.
So it's someone going to meet the president, but then realizing there's yogurt on my pants. And you're like, I gotta get this yogurt. Like, how am I gonna get this off? And it's just great writing. And I couldn't say no.
That's very funny. She's a very good organizer, and she's very good at getting all the facts right and getting people where they need to be behind the scenes. And then I think if you ask her to wear something other than her one black suit that she really feels good in and smart in and tough in, and you ask her to wear a dress, it's...
going to show her sweat and she's itchy and she doesn't like when people look at her. So that's really fun.
That's what this show is sort of about, you know, plucking her from the background as like number two and bringing her to the front in a very visible post, which London would be for an ambassador.
Going to an award show is such a fun idea. Yeah. Going is zero fun. It's so fun to think about wearing a fancy dress. It is so fun. Everything is so pretty. Oh my gosh, and the colors and getting your hair and makeup done and imagining that you'll look so much better than you really do when you do school drop-off. But the truth and the reality of getting your hair and makeup done.
you still look sort of weird. You're instantly starting to sweat, putting on a dress, going, oh, this doesn't look the way I thought it would. Oh, wow, standing in front of hundreds of photographers while they take your picture and you're like, oh, my God, I'm doing the wrong face. I'm not standing right. Oh, they're going to see my sweat. Can they see through this dress? Can they see my nipples?
Like, you know, it's all... That is never fun. Like... All you want to do is do like five minutes of one of those things and then go leave and get a burger and have a beer. But that's not what you get to do. It's like an eight-hour ordeal. So, yes, I fully – when I read that, I was like, oh, yeah, I know what that is. I mean just – you're just in a tailspin of uncomfort.
You know, it's funny, John Landgraf, who runs FX, really advocated for me to do this part. And I kept, I read it and I was like, why in the world would they want me to play this cold, calculating spy, Russian spy? Because literally when I was reading it,
I was thinking of like, you know, in Rocky, like when he has to fight the Russian fighter and he has that amazing Russian wife, I think it's Bridget Nielsen or something, right?
That's who I was picturing. I am frazzled and nervous and like girl next door. So I was like, what? Why does he want me? But that was sort of the genius of him is realizing that you need somebody who does look sort of ordinary and that people have this sort of whatever feeling for so that I could be this crazy killer and, you know, sneaky spy.
It's, you know, Joe and Joel, the writers of the show, they at one point had spoken to like a psychologist about children and how this might affect them. And one of the things I thought was so interesting was they were saying one of the things that
traumatizes a child more than anything is a huge lie because they can't even trust their own memories because they go back and they're like, but none of that was real because you weren't doing that. So I have all these memories that you were working in a travel agency or whatever we were doing. And that's not even real anymore and how damaging that is.
No, I know. It's such a great idea for a show because you have these people, these children looking up to you and they're judging you. And it's such an interesting, it's not just one spy telling the story in a movie. You're you're living with them and you're living with their choices and feeling all these other little satellite parts of their lives.
And that's what's so fun about this era of TV that who knows, maybe we're moving out of now.
It was so fun. I mean, it's an actor's dream. First of all, there's this incredible cheat. And I feel like since The Americans, now there's a lot of things I feel like these days where people get all wigged up and do things.
So many wigs. And stupid mustaches and things. But, you know, it's this incredible shorthand cheat to feeling like someone else, getting to wear that wig or crazy makeup. You know, I did this job with Gary Oldman and Gary said, you know, I've been watching it and I call David Bowie and we FaceTime afterwards and we talk about the show. I was like, oh my.
It's so cool. Totally. So anyway, he said, you know, that one episode where you're wearing this one wig, I think it was this... It was early on. I'm wearing some super short, crazy wig and they kind of gave me weird skin and... And he said, you know, people don't understand that when you do that, it helps you so much. Like you look like a completely different person. I said, I know, it's true.
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