‘The Americans’ has no bad guys, just ‘complex people who do horrible things’

“The Americans” can be a difficult series to embrace initially. It asks the audience to forgive a multitude of immoral behavior — adultery for the purpose of getting classified information, parents hiding their real selves from their children, committing murder to further a political end, and then there’s that whole being a Soviet-era spy thing. But much like “Breaking Bad” and Walter White, the Emmy-nominated FX drama plays to contemporary audiences, luring them in through strong writing and smart character development.

Here, show runners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields share their insights into the series, CIA involvement and why it took four seasons to finally catch the attention of Emmy voters (who bestowed five nominations).

The series has been critically well-received since its debut four years ago. Why haven’t you gotten a best drama nomination until now?

Weisberg: There are so many great shows on now, a better question is how does any show break through and get nominated? Who knows? We had a lot of theories before on why we weren’t getting nominated, now we have to dump those and start over on why we did get nominated. Mostly, we’re just happy.

Has your series, which is set around a family of Soviet spies living in the Washington, D.C., area in the 1980s, generated any negative response for its subject matter?

Fields: We were expecting it. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that we were all afraid the Soviets might bomb us into oblivion. But there has been so little negative reaction that we might as well say there’s been none. The audience seems ready to move past the Cold War. So it would be a real shame to start a new one.

As a former CIA operative, you have to have any scripts you write or co-write approved by the organization. Has the CIA objected to any scripts or particular scenes?

Weisberg: There has never been a problem with an entire script or full scene. There have been very minor changes requested. Or is it required? They’re sort of requested and required at the same time. Anyway, they have never been difficult changes to make.

Part of the show’s setup is that an FBI agent lives across the street from the spy family. Why has it taken him so long to become suspicious of them?

Fields: Two reasons. First off, he was suspicious of them in the pilot and got over it. That sets the bar very high to get suspicious again. Secondly, Philip and Elizabeth’s [played by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell] expertise is living a believable cover. So there’s really been nothing to make Stan [Noah Emmerich] suspicious of his neighbors.

Have your lead actors ever objected to something in the script?

Fields: They have never had a major objection to anything. A few times over the years a line didn’t ring true, or they encouraged us to find more emotional truth in a scene. So we did.

Are you asking your audience to root for the bad guy?

Weisberg: We feel like we’re definitely asking them to root for the enemy. We don’t think of them really as bad guys, though. We think of them as complex people who do some horrible things, but then, we have spies and soldiers on our side who do some horrible things too. Are they bad guys? We want the audience to relate to them, and to see themselves in them.

Could “The Americans” play on network television and was it ever pitched to them?

Fields: The television landscape is so wide open and varied these days. A few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine “The Americans” on network TV. Today, why not? Although no, it was never pitched there.

Your show was renewed for two more seasons and then will end. Will the next season be a setup for the final one or will it have stand-alone story lines?

Weisberg: A little bit of both. It probably won’t be careening towards the final season — you know “The Americans,” we don’t usually careen — but it will knit what’s come before with what’s coming up.

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