Countless actors have fallen in love while starring together on TV, but only Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys can say an on-screen sex scene exposed their secret romance.
The first time Russell and Rhys met was in 2002, when he "very drunkenly asked her for her number when she was a young, single slip of a thing".
Russell turned him down and the actors didn't cross paths again until 2012, when they started work on The Americans together – but Russell didn't remember Rhys at all.
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In fact, it wasn't until they'd done multiple readings and "a heavy dose of fight training" that Rhys reminded Russell that they'd met before.
"I said, 'No, we haven't.' You said, 'Yeah, 10 years ago at a kickball party'," she said to Rhys during a joint appearance years later.
"As soon as you said that, I went, 'Of course I remember that!'"
At the time, Russell was married to Brooklyn-based contractor Shane Deary and shared two children with him, a son born in 2007 and a daughter born in 2011.
The pair had been married since 2007 and seemed happy, so it came as a bit of a shock when they separated in early 2013, just a few months after The Americans premiered.
There didn't seem to be any connection between Russell's separation and her friendship with co-star Rhys at first, but not long after the news was confirmed the pair sparked dating rumours.
They were spotted hanging out together off-camera and seemed to be growing closer, though both stars denied there was anything romantic about their relationship.
"They were laughing and walking closely together," a source told People after spotting the pair on what looked like a date in 2013, adding that they "looked very much like a couple".
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Russell and Rhys only fanned the flames when they appeared in an intimate GQ photoshoot in January 2014, in which she straddled him in one particularly saucy shot.
The infamous sex scene where the director realised they were together was filmed around the same time, though Russell didn't reveal what happened until years later.
"We had to do a very explicit scene together... and [the director] was like 'well this might be kind of awkward and see how this goes,'" Russell said during a TV interview.
"We kind of did it and just did it right away. And he told the script supervisor 'these two have definitely f--ked. He's like 'they're way too comfortable together'."
At the time, she and Rhys hadn't made their relationship public and most of the cast and crew of The Americans didn't even know they were seeing each other.
Fortunately the director kept their secret to himself until Russell and Rhys finally confirmed their romance in April 2014.
They later confessed they did, in fact, fall in love on the set of The Americans and in 2016 they welcomed their first child together, a son they named Sam.
"We had a boy," Russell told the hosts of the US Today show a few months after his birth. "[His name is] Sam. He's so good. He's big and fat and nice."
The pair took to parenting well and though the TV show that brought them together, The Americans, ended in 2018, their romance only grew stronger.
"If you propose to me, I'll punch you clean in the mouth."
You'd think dating your co-star would make it easier to play a married couple on-screen, but as the show drew to an end Rhys said the opposite was true for him.
"My acting was worse. I was trying to impress her so much I wasn't doing anything," he quipped in a 2018 interview with Esquire.
"That's why we didn't get nominated for Emmys in seasons one, two, and three. Damn you, Keri Russell!"
Fortunately, Russell didn't mind and said in an interview of her own that she did and always would respect his work on the show.
In September that year, Rhys credited her as his biggest supporter while accepting an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
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"To the woman who truly got me this award, who just stands in front of me every day and just puts up with me," he said.
Another winner had proposed during his acceptance speech earlier in the night, but if any fans were hoping for Rhys to get down on one knee, they were disappointed.
"She said, 'If you propose to me, I'll punch you clean in the mouth,'" Rhys joked of Russell during his own speech.
"I don't have the words, or the time, neither which would do you justice, Keri Lynn, except thank you."
In recent years, the pair have enjoyed a more private family life with their son, who speaks English as well as Rhys' native Welsh.
Russell and Rhys shared the big screen for the first time in 2023, when both appeared in the thriller Cocaine Bear, though Rhys only makes a short cameo.
Another actor had originally been cast in the role, but when Rhys heard that his partner would be starring in the film directed by Elizabeth Banks, he wanted in on it.
"I unashamedly jumped on my partner's coattails... I read the script, and I simply said, 'Who's playing that? That little fun part, a few seconds in the beginning?'" he told The A.V. Club.
"[Keri] goes, 'I don't know.' I said, 'Ask Banks.'"
His nagging paid off, because Russell eventually approached Banks with the request and she agreed to give the role to Rhys.
Both actors tend to stay out of the headlines these days, instead focusing on their work and their blended family, which includes Russell's two children from her marriage to Deary.
It's been almost 10 years since they took their behind-the-scenes romance public and looking back, Rhys himself admits it could have been a disaster.
"We were both at an age where we've done it long enough to go, 'You know workplace [romances] can be disastrous," he told Page Six recently.
"So, I think it was approached with caution and a great deal of trepidation, and coupled with that, for me, was certainly fun and excitement. Thank God it worked!"
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So how have they made their romance last this long?
According to Rhys, red wine is the secret to a happy relationship.
"The great leveller, the great equaliser. Everything is so much better after a good, solid half-bottle of red wine!" he quipped to People, before giving his love some credit too.
"She has the patience of a saint, so that helps. That is basically it."
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2023-06-30 21:30:56Z
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