Spy story

An Ex-Russian Spy on the Accuracy of ‘The Americans’

“The Americans,” the popular FX series that depicts the lives of Soviet spies working undercover in the U.S. during the Cold War, “looks pretty much like reality,” according to a member of the Russian spy ring nabbed in the U.S. in 2010.

Andrei Bezrukov, a Russian ‘illegal’ who lived in the U.S. under the alias Donald Heathfield, says he and his wife, also a member of the spy ring, didn’t expect the creators of the American series to delve so deeply into the inner lives of the Russian agent characters.