The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer.[1] Despite its spy setting, Weisberg aimed to tell the story of a marriage.[5] "The Americans is at its core a marriage story. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you're struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is."[6] Executive producer Joel Fields described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters' experiences during the Cold War.[6]
