Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys had the perfect cover story: two married spies on The Americans. They were actually falling for each other off-screen—and they wanted to keep it that way.
A burglar changed that. When someone broke into Russell's Brooklyn home and stuffed her belongings into a backpack, police caught the thief and decided to return the couple's personal items on set with full media attention.
Russell politely declined. "I'll just come to a precinct to pick them up," she insisted, according to E! Online. But the officers showed up anyway.
The bag the police brought belonged to Welsh actor Rhys, not Russell. Crew members noticed the mix-up immediately. "Lo, it came to pass that we were together," Rhys joked during an April appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. "Everyone [found out], one clean sweep. Didn't have to hire a publicist, it was great."
The pair's romance had been developing for years. They first met at a drunken kickball-and-beer party in L.A. over a decade earlier, when Rhys was 26. "I very drunkenly asked her for her number," he later revealed on Watch What Happens Live. They reconnected during The Americans rehearsals, and as Russell told The New Yorker, things progressed slowly—"with a lot of, 'Oh, we shouldn't. Oh, this is terrible, we shouldn't!'...Inevitably, a bottle of red wine would be opened."
Russell and Rhys share a 10-year-old son Sam and remain based in Brooklyn. A burglar's mistake is what finally exposed their secret.
