Keri Russell split from her husband (and father of her two children) last December. There seemed to be something shady happening, but no one would put their finger on it right away. Then, just a few weeks after the divorce announcement, Page Six claimed that Keri’s costar in The Americans, Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, was “the reason” why Keri’s marriage didn’t work out. It was all gossip, rumor and speculation, but Keri and Matthew played it sort of safe, not outright denying it but playing little word games to tamp down the rumors. Except that People Magazine is now saying they’re definitely together. Matthew Rhys is totally a homewrecker.
They’ve dodged relationship rumors for months. But now – unlike their spy characters on The Americans – the secret (love) life of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys has been revealed.
PEOPLE has learned that Russell, 38, and Rhys, 39, are a couple.
The two stepped out for date night on Thursday, stopping into New York’s The Public Theater, where they watched the Steven Soderbergh-directed play The Library. They sat together and theatergoers spotted Russell stroking Rhys’s hair and the two whispering before they left together.
When asked about his rumored relationship with Russell, Rhys told PEOPLE last month, “That’s the best [rumor] I love.” He stopped short of confirming the relationship, but said his mother even asks about the rumors. “I tell her, ‘You have to take off your Google alerts,’ ” he said.
The couple’s recent theater date wasn’t the first time they were seen getting close. Earlier this year the two took a stroll through Brooklyn Heights. “They were walking super close together and laughing, even stopped to look at some furniture on the street,” an onlooker said of the pair at the time. “They looked very much like a couple.”
The new romance comes after Russell’s announcement last December that she and Shane Deary, her husband of nearly 7 years, were separating. The former couple have a son River, 6, and a daughter Willa, 2. The actress’s rep told PEOPLE at the time, “The separation is amicable and their focus is on their children.”
Well, it might be love. Or is it just boning? My take is that it’s probably love – Keri is now a single mother who basically left her husband after a torrid affair with a costar. Will Matthew step up to the plate? Perhaps. Rhys is sort of “famously single” and I suspect, much like Michael Sheen, he wants to stay famously unmarried. But hey, maybe Keri doesn’t want to marry him either. Maybe they’ll just figure it out and everything will be okay. But I just thought you’d like to know – sometimes married actresses have torrid affairs, just like the dudes.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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