One of the stars of The Americans, Keri Russell, says that she knows it was time for the show to come to an end.
Knowing when to end a series is something so many studios and shows fail to grasp, letting programmes run on and on until most of the viewership has either lost interest and gone home or is only now half paying attention.
Luckily, FX didn’t let their 80s set spy drama The Americans drag on forever and have ended the show with its sixth season, going out with a bang in the last of its 10 episodes this week.
Keri Russell, who starred in the show since the beginning, has discussed ending the series during a conference call (via Screen Rant), saying that she was ready for it to end:
“So, as sad as I am to go it just feels like the right time. I think the stories were still so good and so compelling and I would hate to be involved with something that I thought was creatively so interesting and then watch it sort of peter out. As much as this six and final season coming to a head was hard in some ways it felt right. That was sort of comforting in some way. And to be totally honest, especially the beginning of that season I was working so many nights that I was so tired most of the time that I think I was probably like, ‘You know, oh I’m glad this is ending because I can’t do this anymore.’ [Laughs]
“I read the end about halfway through [the season]… I was a little behind in reading my scripts and I had a chunk… in my shooting day that I had like three hours off before I had to go back. And I went to this super fancy restaurant near where we were shooting and I sat at the bar… and ordered a giant glass of red wine and read [episodes] eight, nine, and ten in one sitting. And so and I cried and I tried to hide my eyes like ‘I’m not crying.’ And I just read them back to back and went back to work and I loved it… to me it feels pitch perfect and devastating in all the right ways.”
Do you agree with Russell’s comments? And what did you make of the finale? Did The Americans end on the right note?