No, you’re not seeing double: That’s the same man as two very diffe🐼rent Russian spies this season — a compassionate KGB agen﷽t on the Cold War drama “The Americans” and the sinister trickster of today’s ripped-from-the-headlines “Homeland.”
“Try n🐓ot to compare them,” pleads Costa Ronin, the 39-year-old who plays, respectively, Oleg Burov and Yevgeny Gromov. “They’re both a product of their time and proud of their co🌃untries.”
Speaking to The Post in Russian-accented English from Moscow, Ronin — who lives in Los Angeles these days, when he isn’t shooting in New York — was KGB🍃-like cagey about whether he was there for business or pleasure. He was, he allowed, visiting his girlfriend, “but I don’t want to talk about m🅠y personal life.”
What we do know is that he was born and raised in the former Soviet Union town of Kaliningrad; learned English at 15 while working at a local radio station and, two years later, emigrated with his mother to Newꦓ Zealand. From there, he moved to Australia and traveled “all around the world” before surfacing in Season 2 of FX’s “The Americans” as Burov, the tech-savvy son of a rich bureaucrat. Sent to the Soviet Union’s Washington, DC, Rezidentura in 1982, he meets and falls in love with a colleague, Nina, who’s having an affair with an FBI agent. In a lovely, if unlikely twist, the KGB agent and G-man team up to save Nina’s life after she’s sent to a Soviet ꦬprison.
As The Post reported in 2016, Annet Mahendru, the act♈ress who played Nina, was dev𝓰astated when her character was killed.
“I know it was tough for her because it was a huge part of her life, 🐠but sometimes you have to say goodbye,” Ronin says. “[But] I heard from her a couple of days ago. She’s married, with a baby — she’s doing fantastic!”
Burov may not be long for this world, either. He had a moving scene several episode🅘s back, leaving his wife and baby behind as he was summoned back to the US in this, the show’s final season.
“Like a Russian matryoshka doll, there are layers within layers to Costa,” Noah Emmerich, who plays FBI agent Stan Beeman, tells The Post. “After these many years, I still feel that there’s much about him I don’t know.” That said, Emmerich adds, “he is a serious, passionate, committed artist … and a joy to work with.”
At least we’ll have Ronin’s Yevgeny Gromov on Showtime’s “Homeland.” Showrunner Alex Gansa tells The Post he’s gratefulꦦ to the creators of “The Americans” for “sharing” him: “Taꦗll, dark and Russian — he’s the perfect villain for our times.”
Indeed. When Gromov isn’t tweeting fake news to foment a Waco-esque shootout, he’s blackmailing a lawyer or dumping a body. But༒ even this bad guy has a back story.
“There’s a lot that ꧋will come together in Episodes 11 and 12,” Ronin says. “All of a sudden, you say, ‘Ha! So, this is why he does what he does.’
“Russia today is not what it was 30 years ago,” he adds. “I was there in 1991, when the government was going through turꦅmoil. Russians have their own vision of the world.”
Can we expect a “Homelan𒈔d” cameo from ꦕVladimir Putin?
Ronin goes silent a moment, thജen laughs. “I don’t think he’s got the time,” the actor says. “It takesও so much time and effort to do this thing. But, you know, it’s worth trying!”