Matthew Rhys and wife Keri Russell team up for new FX project about an exiled extraterrestrial

Matthew Rhys and wife Keri Russell team up for new FX project about an exiled extraterrestrial

Matthew Rhys and wife Keri Russell are teaming up for a new project. 

The couple of six years have a project in the works for FX called Wyrd based on a comic book series of the same name launched in 2019. 

Described as ‘James Bond meets the X-Files,’ by Dark Horse Comics, Rhys will star as the lead as well as act as an executive producer alongside Russell. 

Teaming up: Matthew Rhys, 46, and wife Keri Russell, 44, are teaming up for a project for FX called Wyrd about an exiled extraterrestrial – a show described as ‘James Bond meets the X-Files’

Rhys will play an exiled extraterrestrial who is sent to earth to better understand humanity. 

Abandoned by his people who do not return for him, he is forced to acclimate to the new world while trying to make it home. 

Russell and Rhys have produced and acted with each other in the 2013 hit drama series The Americans which ran for six seasons. 

He won the Lead Actor in a Drama Series Emmy for his role in the Cold War drama and also stars as the main character in HBO’s Perry Mason which was renewed for a second season.  

Wyrd: Rhys will star as the lead in the comic book inspired project and will be working with Russell for the first time since their show The Americans

Wyrd: Rhys will star as the lead in the comic book inspired project and will be working with Russell for the first time since their show The Americans

The couple first fell in love on set but had met 10 years prior as Russell said that he had ‘very drunkenly’ hit on her. 

‘I very drunkenly asked her for her number when she was a young, single slip of a thing. So I sort of knew then, when I was 26,’ he said in a 2017 Watch What Happens Live appearance. 

Russell was previously in a relationship with Shane Deary but split with him during the first season of The Americans, moving on with Rhys publicly a year later despite being linked a month after her 2013 divorce.  

The pair’s new endeavor Wyrd is a project from Oscar-nominated screenwriter and producer Sheldon Turner who created 2009’s Up In The Air with George Clooney.

Turner and his Vendetta Productions partner Jennifer Klein are teaming up with Dark Horse for the intergalactic project.  

The Americans: The couple first fell in love on set of the show in 2013 and Russell divorced from her former husband Deary moving on with Rhys shortly thereafter; pictured in The Americans

The Americans: The couple first fell in love on set of the show in 2013 and Russell divorced from her former husband Deary moving on with Rhys shortly thereafter; pictured in The Americans