'The Americans' creators say fans begged them to kill off the teenage daughter on the show - and it was 'very upsetting'
- Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, the showrunners for FX's "The Americans," said fans wanted them to kill off Paige Jennings.
- Paige is the teenage daughter of KGB spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings in the show.
- The showrunners said this was "very upsetting."
- Paige is still alive, and the show is now in its sixth and final season.
Some fans have great ideas. But many fans of FX's "The Americans," now airing its sixth and final season on FX, wanted teenager Paige Jennings to die, which was "very upsetting" to the showrunners, they told Business Insider.
On "The Americans," which follows undercover KGB agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, there are a lot of deaths. It's not "Game of Thrones" level by any means, but at any time, any character of significance can go.
In season four, Nina Krilova (Annet Mahendru), is abruptly executed in the Soviet Union for working with the FBI. In season three (and in one of the most brutal deaths in television history), Philip and Elizabeth stuff a woman's body into a suitcase to hide the evidence. In season one, one of the main characters, FBI agent Chris Amador, dies after being stabbed by Philip.
But fans wanted at least one more person to die.
Speaking to Business Insider, showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields said that fans wanted them to kill off Paige, the teenage daughter of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings.
Throughout the series, Paige grows more and more suspicious of her parents, and eventually gets close enough to finding out the truth that her parents tell her. Paige finds a community at a local church, and tells her Pastor (Tim) and his wife that her parents work for the KGB.
This apparently resulted in fans wanting to see her die, likely at the hands of her parents or their bosses.
"One of the interesting things for us on the show has been to discover that the audience wants the strangest people to die," Weisberg said. "There was a long period of time when they kept wanting us to kill Pastor Tim. And then a lot of people were very bitter about Paige. They wanted Paige to die!"
"It's very upsetting," Fields added. "And from our perspective we're like, 'How many people do we have to kill?' Although that's not how we decide who to kill. But sometimes the nice people have to go."
Paige is alive on the show now, and will probably survive.
But everyone else is fair game.