Keri Russell shot to fame in 1998 with Felicity, the JJ Abrams and Matt Reeves-created drama in which she played a young Californian woman navigating college life in New York. The show was a critical and commercial success and made Russell a household name, but the intense public scrutiny that came with having a series named after her character left her feeling uncomfortable, particularly early on before audiences had even seen the show.

Felicity ran for four seasons and earned two Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmy nominations, with Russell herself winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Series in 1999. Despite this success, she faced trivial media "controversies", including being wrongly blamed for a ratings dip after cutting her hair, and was drawn into unrelated scandals such as the exposure of a screenwriter's false age claims. Reflecting in 2005, Russell admitted the experience "got really hard" and that she felt she was simply reacting to demands without full awareness of what she was doing, even as the show and its lead character remain fondly remembered in retrospectives of 1990s and 2000s television.