“The win is getting to go to the award show, but not winning, so you never have to speak. That’s the secret,” Keri Russell confesses to me as a late summer darkness descends on our evening video call. Russell, fresh off her FLAUNT shoot, is not being facetious. She’s a pragmatic person, an actor that’s been a part of our collective viewing consciousness since she turned 15, so her insider secrets are worth some weight. 

Russell is, of course, in on the joke: in order to “never have to speak at the award show,” one must be part of a class of elite artists, and must have delivered a performance so outstanding that it was isolated from a sea of media content released in the entire year. Keri Russell knows that the real win is in the work.

Russell, who made her mark as Felicity in the eponymous early 2000s rom-com series created by J.J. Abrams, has become known for the signature brand of warmth and onscreen charm she brings to her breadth of work. And, truly, Russell’s face is ubiquitous: she’s in action and fantasy franchises (Mission: Impossible III [2006], Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [2014], Star Wars Episode IX- The Rise of Skywalker [2019]. She’s in long-running television shows (The aforementioned Felicity; FX’s The Americans, and Running Wilde). She was in the riotous Cocaine Bear [2023]. She voiced a fantasy video game (Open Roads). She’s had guest spots on some of the most prominent series of the last three decades (Scrubs, Arrested Development, Sesame Street, Boy Meets World, et. al). All of these have earned the California-born actor a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and helped secure a permanent place in her viewers’ hearts (as well as a multitude of Emmy and Critics Choice nominations, with a Golden Globe win.) 

This time around, the American actor is nominated as the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama series for her portrayal of the brilliant, no-nonsense US ambassador Kate Wyler in Debora Cahn’s The Diplomat, soon to kick off its third season on Netflix. “Getting the nomination is the win for me, like, that’s the ideal world where you get recognized in this massive field, where there are so many TV shows, you get recognized for being on a show, and one that I love so much.” Russell ponders. “You want to be invited, and [you] get to wear a nice dress.” Just hold the speeches, please. 

That being said, Russell is the first to admit: “I’m not the hugest fashion person,” she laughs. “I mean, I love it, but I’m not incredibly knowledgeable.” On our Zoom, she is fresh faced, wears a crisp, white cotton shirt with light grey stripes and tortoise dark brown rimmed eyeglasses, her beautiful brown hair pulled back casually, but in the FLAUNT shoot, she’s wearing the latest collection by Italian luxury brand Loro Piana. Russell confesses that the clothing made her feel “[Like] a Lux Patagonian adventure settler on some amazing estate somewhere,” she laughs. Russell’s own style icons include a couple of “strong pantsuit ladies,”  among them being 80s model-turned-actress Lauren Hutton and “the woman in The Verdict with Paul Newman—Charlotte Rampling.”

Clothes play their own important role in The Diplomat, in which Russell stars alongside Rufus Sewell as married US diplomats Kate and Hal Wyler. When we first meet the Wylers in Season 1, the couple is on the verge of a separation, but then work—in the way of Kate’s reassignment as US ambassador to the UK at a crucial time for global diplomacy—plays a part in reconnecting them.

As the show progresses, Kate’s black and grey pantsuits are punctuated by bright, bold, risky cuts in particularly passionate or important scenes—a narrative choice made by costume designers Roland Sanchez, Edward K. Gibbon, and the show’s creator, Cahn herself. Clothing, along with “humor and location porn” according to Russell, creates the textured, high-drama aura that has earned the show international acclaim.

At the time of our conversation, filming for the series is done for the year. Russell is ecstatic—she’s spent the past couple of summers in the UK on set for The Diplomat. “I didn’t realize how fucking great summer is!” she laughs. This summer, she’s home in New York City, where she lives with her children and her partner, fellow actor and former co-star on The Americans, Matthew Rhys. Russell spent most of her childhood in the American West, but has called New York home for “quite awhile now.” “It’s a place where you can’t really be alone,” she says of the city. “There are always people around and you can be in your own thoughts but still feel the buzz of other people. And there’s a real energy to that.” 

Now, Russell has arrived at an energetically restful place. “I’m experiencing this moment of having these huge milestones in my life where maybe it’s that feeling of a lot of the hard work, the fruits of my labor are finally paying off,” she admits, “[but] I’m not one of those people who, after the season ends, is dying to find some cool movies to do. I really relish my moments of just, you know, home, doing laundry and pottering around the house…reading books and seeing girlfriends and going on long walks.”

While we speak, her youngest son, Sam, knocks on her door, asking to come in “to take a quick shower,” Russell tells me smiling, after he’s gone, “I’m up here, hiding in my room.” Living in the constant chaos of New York, as well as being a mother of three, Russell admits the greatest luxury is choosing stillness: “One of my favorite places is Big Sur in California,” Russell says. “I take a trip on my own every year, I fly to San Francisco and I stay at the same little place I always stay, and I do my little walk around that neighborhood and have a great dinner on my own, and then wake up in the morning and have my rental car, and I drive down this certain path that I take to get to Big Sur and I just have that quiet moment with those giant trees.” 

Russell is the perfect ambassador (pardon the pun) for the idea of self preservation through stillness. In a world of social media noise, the actor is not on any of the platforms—she watches her successes in life unfold organically through her hard work, and she clearly demonstrates that solitude does not have to mean loneliness. Russell has built around her a support system, “an enormous support team,” as she calls it, which includes her ex-husband, Shane Deary, dad to two of her children and her current life partner, Rhys. 

“The kids all have these three sets of grandparents,” she declares proudly. “I don’t wish divorce on anybody anytime soon, but, you know, we have found a way. We’ve had big Christmas dinners where three sets of grandparents are around the table, and we’ve cooked for all of them, and all the kids are there, and it’s just extra hands, and everyone’s involved, and everyone’s grateful for everyone.” 

On the same day, at around the exact same time as our interview, another meeting is happening in Alaska, a diplomatic encounter between the US and Russia that would certainly benefit from the wisdom and presence of Russell’s character, Ambassador Wyler. “I am so completely impressed and blown away by the people who work in the Foreign Service and in the diplomatic world,” Russell admits. “What’s happening now is pretty shocking, so I can only hope that all of them don’t go away…because we need these people! They do so much work, and they have such expertise.” And without the diplomatic core, she concludes, “All of that knowledge sort of goes away.”

We begin to think about power players, both real and fictionalized. I ask if she’d like to play a superhero one day, and Russell gasps. “Oh, gosh, I don’t think I know enough about superheroes.”

I think I disagree—if the archetypical superhero communicates meaning, power, and aspirations for the generation, Russell seems extraordinarily well equipped. She seems to understand (and portray quite well) the paradoxical relationship between power and vulnerability, portraying strength and softness and humor and severity all at once, in singular roles, for across decades and mediums. It’s safe to say, much of the modern condition falls under her purview, whether the issue at hand is romantic, filled with adrenaline, or delicate and political. Keri Russell is our favorite superheroine. 

Photographer: Gavin Bond

Stylist: Anna Katsanis

Hair: Clara Leonard

Makeup: Soo Park

Photo Assistant: Myles Morillo

Flaunt Film: Sophie Elgort

Location: The 1896 Studios & Stages,

Props: Primate Props