That scene was so important, especially for Kimmy, because she was more satisfied with that connection than just having sex. Watching Kimberly slide from wanting a romantic relationship with him into this caretaker role was powerful, and unexpected. The scene a few weeks ago where Jim tells the story of the son he’s never met - which is actually a true story about Philip - and asks Kimmy to pray with him about it seemed huge precisely because usually his two lives are kept so separate. When I’m on set, I don’t think it would be good if I thought about it too much beyond making it sort of similar, because their stories are completely separate. She doesn’t know he has another family she doesn’t know anything else. I try to think about it a little bit, just so it can have that same kind of vibe - so you’re like, “oh, there’s something familiar here.” But when I was shooting it, I didn’t want to think about it too much, because Kimmy knows Jim, who’s a completely different guy. Does that parallel shape how you play the part? At the same time he’s fighting the KGB about dragging his teenage daughter into the spy life, he’s doing the exact same thing to some other spy’s teenage daughter. Jim and Kimmy’s relationship is a mirror image of what’s going on between Philip and Paige. People are so wrapped around … well, not wrapped around themselves, but every five minutes, something new happens in life, and they’re preoccupied by the next thing that happens. It is so basic, but at the same time, it’s complicated because a lot of people don’t understand that it’s so important. It’s creepy, because it’s such a basic human need. Over and over, Philip and Elizabeth find people who just need someone to talk to them, and they fill that gap in their lives. It’s scary how easy this makes it to manipulate people, and not just with Kimmy. She doesn’t get that acknowledgment at home. If a person feels like “they’re not acknowledging me” … That’s a very important feeling in life, even if it’s not romantic. It’s the attention that I want someone to give me.” It’s not even attention, it’s care. She’s like, “he’s giving me what I want, and I’m feeling satisfied. They’re not a kid, but they’re not an adult, they’re at a really weird age. That’s huge, especially for someone who’s 15 years old. He’s kind of the only one, it seems to her, who’s paying attention. In tonight’s episode, there’s a moment after Jim brings her home drunk from a frat party where he tells her, “unlike your friends, you’re very real.” You get the sense that as much as anything else, she’s just desperate for someone to talk to who will listen.Ībsolutely. It’s not just one thing, or it’s just one-dimensional. She’s talking to him as if he’s her age, like it’s no problem. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing, because if she did, she wouldn’t be doing it. She has the daddy issues, but she’s not aware of that. Were you ever tempted to just play her as some dumb kid who doesn’t know what she’s getting into, or were you digging into those psychological issues right from the start? It was obvious that she’s dealing with a lot in her life.
That’s how I tried to balance it out: by sympathizing with Kimmy. You hear it with men, too - they might go with an older woman because they’ve got some issue with their mother. You hear a lot of stories where young girls tend to go with old guys because of this.
But the way I approached this role is that she has daddy issues. I don’t even think I could do this role if I was 15. The reason why people are like “No, don’t hook up!” is that she’s 15. The whole time Kimmy’s trying to get together with this older man, we’re screaming “Noooooo!” It’s up to you to get us to sympathize with what we recognize as a terrible idea. Your character’s desires are 180 degrees away from the audience’s. We asked actor Julia Garner ( Martha Marcy May Marlene) how it feels to play this pivotal part. And the harder he tries to keep her at arm’s length, the deeper her affection for him gets. This season, as Philip Jennings’s spy games hit closer and closer to home, he’s also been ordered to cultivate his most vulnerable target ever: the neglected teenage daughter of a secret CIA agent. “You know,” 15-year-old wild child Kimberly Breland tells her much older friend “Jim” on tonight’s episode of The Americans, “sometimes I think you’re the only one who really cares about me.” Little does Kimmy know that her white knight bleeds Soviet red.
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