Martha Has A "Thrilling" 'Americans' Season Ahead

I have been Team Martha from the beginning of The Americans. I don’t care what those jerks in her office say, Martha, played by Alison Wright, is lovely and totally deserves to be happy with Clark. It's too bad, then, that Clark is fake, the alter ego of Russian spy Philip. And in The Americans Season 4 premiere, Martha learned something she can't ignore when Philip, as Clark, confessed that he murdered the FBI analyst, which we all saw last season, to keep them from finding out that Martha helped him. I spoke with Wright before the season premiere at a Television Critics Association panel, where she sheds some light on her character's reaction.

“It’s the worst because not only is her friend and coworker dead, but her husband killed him,” Wright says. “No matter what she might’ve thought about Clark and the gray area that she wasn’t sure perhaps exactly what he did or what was true or not, I don’t think she ever considered that he was a killer. So it’s pretty shocking information that she finds out in the very first episode.”

It looks like this will be a big season for Martha on The Americans. Trailers already show her coming to Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), which is more bad news for Clark/Philip, and Wright hints that Martha will be going through a lot as Season 4 progresses.

“I suppose in terms of finding a path to convey what she knows and doesn’t know and what she’s admitting and not admitting, and exploring the different ways of doing that, the ways that we deceive ourselves and then we deceive other people and what we admit to ourselves in private or not and how that affects you moving forward, Martha has a lot of heavy lifting coming up,” she says. “I’ll have to get more specific about that later in the season. It’s been super satisfying and very exciting and will be the most thrilling season yet.”

Wright also explains that the Clark/Martha marriage was based on real cases where spies married sources for their mission, and the creators of The Americans approached her about playing out such a story way back in Season 1.

“They always knew it,” Wright says. “About halfway through the first season, they took me aside and said, ‘Look, this is what the plan is, just so you know.’ And I was amazed. They told me that they were going to get married and that in these situations, they went on for years. Sometimes they would be married for 10 years. There were children. It was the long game. When they took me aside halfway through the first season, I was clued into what was up.” We'll have to see what the future holds for Martha and "Clark" as The Americans Season 4 continues every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on FX.

Images: FX (2)