Later this week, Netflix debuts The Beast In Me, a miniseries starring Claire Danes as an author writing a book about her infamous, possibly homicidal next-door neighbor, played by Matthew Rhys. This means that Netflix will have debuted TV seasons starring both Rhys and his partner (and former The Americans co-star) Keri Russell (with The Diplomat) in less than a month.
Alan Sepinwall
The timing of this got me thinking about the parallel careers of Russell and Danes. They're around the same age. They began acting on TV as teenagers in the late Eighties and early Nineties: Russell on The New Mickey Mouse Club, Danes on My So-Called Life. Both My So-Called Life and Russell's Felicity have had pop cultural afterlives that far exceed their ratings at the time. And both played spies on 2010s cable dramas: Russell as Elizabeth Jennings on The Americans, Danes as Carrie Mathison on Homeland.
And it got me wondering: if you swapped those latter roles, would Danes be able to play Elizabeth, and would Russell be able to play Carrie? And what would happen if you pulled that kind of switcheroo with other actors whose careers had similar parallels?
Let's hit a few of these, and then I'd love to hear both your own suggestions, as well as your assessments of the pairings I chose.