The Americans actor Matthew Rhys is still not over taking home the one award his on-screen and real-life wife, Keri Russell, has yet to claim: the Emmy.
“I just feel bad,” the 51-year-old star of Apple TV’s horror comedy hit Widow’s Bay, said on Obsessed: The Podcast, praising his wife’s “incredible performance” on the acclaimed FX series. “Not to take away anything from Claire Foy from The Crown because she was incredible in that,” Rhys added. “I just wish Keri got it because she was so incredible.”
Though both Rhys and Russell, 50, earned three Emmy nominations each for their roles as undercover KGB spies masquerading as a pleasant American couple in The Americans—Philip and Elizabeth Jennings—only Rhys got to take home a golden statue. He won for the FX show’s final season in 2019.
Rhys directed his acceptance speech to “the woman who truly got me this award, who just stands in front of me and puts up with me.”
“She said, ‘If you propose to me, I’ll punch you clean in the mouth,’” he quipped. “I don’t have the words, I don’t have the time, neither of which would do you justice, Keri Lynn, except, ‘Thank you. More to come.’ Thank you.”
Eight years later, Rhys finds it hard to stay sorry for Russell for very long.
“But you know, she has a Golden Globe, she has a Screen Actors Guild award. She’s fine, I’m not worried about her,” he added, shaking his head. “Yeah, she’s got a ton.”
Rhys and Russell first met at a kickball match in 2002, where Rhys admittedly “drunkenly asked for her number.” The still-intoxicated actor left a rambling message on her answering machine—which she forgot until he reminded her on the set of The Americans a decade later.
“‘You know, we’ve met before,’ you said, ‘No, we haven’t.’ I said, ‘Yeah, 10 years ago at a kickball party,’” Russell recalled on Andy Cohen Live in 2017. “As soon as you said that, I went, ‘Of course I remember that!’”
Since the couple starred together in The Americans, they have not worked together. Rhys told Obsessed that they’re waiting for the perfect script to find them.
“We always talk about it,” he said. “It’s tough, it has to be the right thing, because I just think it can feel a bit like stunt casting. It would just have to be the right thing.”
“But, yeah, we would love to. Certainly never rule it out,” he continued. “And, you know, I keep joking that I’m coming onto The Diplomat as like a British diplomat."
While Russell continues to attract accolades for her acclaimed work on The Diplomat, Rhys has launched himself into awards contention with Apple TV’s new comedy-horror Widow’s Bay, which the Daily Beast has crowned “the best new show of the year.”
Widow’s Bay premieres each Thursday on Apple TV.
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