Is FX's The Americans Based on a True Story?

FX's award-winning series The Americans is immersed in the historical era of the Cold War, but it is The Americans based on a true story? Debuting in 2013, The Americans follows Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), a seemingly normal couple living in the suburbs of Washington, DC. However, their normal American facade hid the reality that they were secretly KGB agents working for Russia undercover, spying on their adoptees at home and sending information back to the Motherland.

The hit FX series is gripping and tense and was acclaimed for the six seasons it ran. As the Jennings try to balance the normal half of their lives as parents and honest neighbors with being spies for the Soviet Union, they perform a dangerous and delicate balancing act to keep their identities intact. The story is incredible, and most surprising of all is that There is a strong historical basis for The Americans' premise.

Americans are partially inspired by real-life events

The characters were inspired by real sleeper agents

The Americans' Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings weren't real people. However, they were inspired by a number of people who actually exist, one couple in particular: Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov, who later took on the identities of Canadian couple Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Donald Howard Heathfield. Elena and Andrey were born in Russia and later met while attending college at Tomsk State University.

After college, they moved to Moscow, where they joined the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and began their espionage training. On the surface, “Tracey” and “Donald” couldn’t seem more normal. Donald studied in Canada and then Paris, earning his master's degree in international business. In turn, Tracey worked as a real estate agent, becoming one of the most successful and hard-working agents at her company.. The pair even had two sons while living in Canada in the early 90s, Timothy and Alexander.

After living in Canada for 20 years, the couple moved to the United States and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1999. During this time, however, they acted as foreign spies in the countries where they were incorporated, sending information back to their countries. handlers and contacts in Moscow.

What Happened to the Real-Life Spies Who Inspired Americans

The real spies were arrested and sent back to Russia

Although Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov were the two spies who most directly inspired the characters of Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, they were not the only Russian secret agents working in the United States on behalf of the SVR at the time. In June 2010, after a decade of surveillance by several US intelligence agencies, Vavilova and Bezrukov were arrested along with eight other Russian agents who belonged to a spy network that the US DOJ dubbed the Illegals Program.

The operation, dubbed Operation Ghost Stories, also captured an eleventh Russian agent in Cyprus. However, he skipped bail after his arrest and disappeared. A twelfth – who worked for Microsoft in the US – was deported. Russian court documents revealed that two more fled the country before the FBI could arrest them.

As for the ten who were arrested, including Vavilova and Bezrukov, they escaped quite easily considering how long they had been spying on various countries. In July 2010, the United States and Russia negotiated a prisoner exchange on the neutral territory of Vienna. The ten Russian agents were deported back to Moscow in exchange for four Russian citizens who had been arrested in Russia for espionage on behalf of the US and UK.

Upon returning to Russia, Vavilova, Bezrukov and the other Russian agents were awarded the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” 4th Class. Elizabeth and Phillip were never arrested in The Americansinstead he fled back to Russia before being detained. However, as in reality, the program ended with the Russian spies escaping accountability.

The Americans were also very precise at the time

The show was praised for recreating 1980s America

The premise of The Americans was realistic in its setup, but the reality of the series is that it wasn't as exciting as the FX show makes it out to be. “If you aim for 100 percent realism, you will put the audience to sleep,” said former CIA officer Rob Baer (via US News). However, even looking beyond the stories added to make the show more exciting, What remains is one of the most historically accurate portrayals of an era of time put on the small screen. This is what the 1980s looked and felt like.

The producers wanted to create a series that lived in a bubble in the early 1980s and not let anything outside of that bubble influence it. Joel Fields said this was important to them when writing the scripts. “It has a lot to do with the early 80s. And we don't allow external events to affect the show,” he said (via NPR). “The themes of the show are very much about the nature of being an enemy and the nature of having an enemy and how human it is to invent enemies.“

The Americans it has a recent rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 89% rating on Metacritic (signaling universal acclaim). Much of the praise goes to bringing 1980s Cold War-era America to life. The production team maintained the look by reviewing old department store catalogs and looking at photos of people's homes from the 1980s. dark noir style to eliminate anything about modern society that was leaking out. The result was an award-winning show that remains a modern classic.

Americans' accuracy in real life is one of their greatest strengths

Adherence to realism made Americans unforgettable

Few programs released in recent decades have been as universally acclaimed as The Americans. Although there were many aspects that ensured it was as well received as the performances of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, the accuracy of The Americans is undeniably one of the show's biggest strengths.

The setting of 1980s Cold War America and the paranoia that permeated every level of society is unique, and capturing the essence of such a difficult period (especially for those working in intelligence) was no easy task. The Americans managed to perfectly recreate the tension of a world convinced it was on the brink of nuclear war, and that was entirely due to the creative team who pulled no punches when it came to accuracy.

The level of consideration when it comes to accuracy in The Americans it was truly remarkable. For example, American-born Soviet KGB agents rarely, if ever, speak Russian. While having characters like Russell's Elizabeth and Rhys' Philip speak Russian in their privacy was an easy way to let the audience know that they were working with the USSR, this was not true. Other shows that placed less importance on realism and accuracy probably would have opted for all Soviet spies speaking KGB language, but no Americans, and it worked in the show's favor.

The Americans has been praised for its realism repeatedly throughout its 7 seasons. While this may have sometimes run the risk of confusing audience members more accustomed to straightforward storytelling, or who expected more straightforward depictions of characters like KGB spies, the decision to go for precision over ease of understanding worked. It is highly unlikely that The Americans It would have been just as well-received if it ignored historical accuracy, and to this day it remains one of the best small-screen depictions of the Cold War era America has ever made.