The “once in a lifetime” movie Keri Russell needed to make: “I don’t know if I’ll get the chance again”
Anyone who has followed Keri Russell’s career over the last 25 years or so would probably have the idea that she is not someone to be messed with.
Much as Americans grew up with her as Felicity, the JJ Abrams show about a flighty teen following her crush to New York, over here we know her as The Diplomat and as the frankly scary Russian spy Elizabeth Jennings in The Americans.
The second show is one of the finest TV series in recent history; nowhere near enough people know about it, let alone watch it, and it’s one of the first I would recommend to anyone looking for a bingeable six seasons of superbly made, brilliantly acted, perfectly written drama. Oh, and it has an incredibly cool soundtrack too.
Russell is astonishing in it right from the off, going from suburban ‘80s mom and wife to deadly bombshell assassin in as long as it takes to change a pair of shoes and stick a wig on, using her sexuality, wit and finely honed killing skills to go from one perilous situation to another, always with the risk of her true life being uncovered and facing prison or death.
She deservedly picked up five Emmys and four Golden Globe nominations for her work on the show spanning half a decade, and after landing a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, Abrams brought her on to the last instalment of his Star Wars trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, in 2019.
Russell then had a fairly quiet few years aside from battling a class-A crazed Ursid in Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear, before she took the lead role in The Diplomat, playing a no-nonsense ambassador in a show that has proved a hit for Netflix; its third season premiered this month, and a fourth has already been commissioned.
But even before The Americans, there were signs that Russell had a hard edge to her becoming features, especially opposite Tom Cruise in 2006’s Mission Impossible III. Often credited as a movie that saved the franchise after the low point of the second film, it featured the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman alongside Russell, who played a highly-trained Impossible Missions Force agent captured in Germany.
Once again, Russell had her fan JJ Abrams, who directed the film after David Fincher dropped out, to thank for her involvement in the movie, which served as a stand-alone in the series.
Dragged into the now-familiar Cruise world of ridiculous stunts and dizzying fight scenes, Russell had to learn how to assemble a gun with a blindfold on in seconds and had a carefully choreographed stick combat sequence with Cruise. It didn’t take the shine off getting the part in the first place for her however, as she said at the time: “That’s part of the ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to do this kind of movie with that kind of actor ever again.”
There’s little chance she’d get passed up on that kind of role these days given she’s shown how badass she can be time and again, and aside from acting she’s now doing some behind the camera work, including as an executive producer on The Diplomat and in an upcoming show about a stranded extra-terrestrial called Wyrd, which will star her Americans and real life husband Matthew Rhys.
