They were right.
The cast of the beloved TV series Friday Night Lights was back in the Lone Star State this past weekend to celebrate 20 years since the show launched. Actors Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Jessie Plemons, Adrianne Palicki, Scott Porter, Gaius Charles, and more were in Austin to reflect back on everyone’s favorite high school football team from Dillon, Texas.
The discussion was a part of the ATX TV Festival, which got started in 2012, right around the time the show ended, and organizers spent the first few years of the festival with a concerted effort on bringing Friday Night Lights content to festival-goers… reunions, screening, discussions with the cast. And to celebrate 20 years of the show, the pulled out all the stops, and brought in most of the top cast, minus Oscar-winner Michael B. Jordan.
Of course, fan-favorite couple Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, who played Coach Eric Taylor and Tami Taylor FNL from 2006 to 2011, portrayed one of the most realistic and healthy marriages I’ve ever seen on television, and the actors developed a real-life friendship throughout their time on the show, too. They famously fought back against writers who wanted their characters to have affairs, insisting that they show a more grounded, normal marriage navigating everyday life, which they did a truly impeccable job at.
And the cast sat down with the Today show during the reunion, and spoke about their time together and what really made the show so special, and Britton says she and Chandler were adamant from day one that neither one of their characters could have an affair. She says they wanted it to be about “partnership, collaboration, and making mistakes,” but “always going back to each other”:
“We agreed right at the outset, we were like, ‘No matter what, we can’t let them make either one of us have an affair.’ They really tried… we pushed right back on it. We wanted it to be about partnership, and collaboration, and making mistakes, but always going back to each other.”
The Taylor family really was the heart of the show, including their daughter Julie, who was played by Aimeé Teegarden, and she said that watching them work together on the show was almost like watching a real relationship because of the “united front” they had:
“Watching the two of them work together, they had this like, united front, like a solid, actual relationship. It was really beautiful to watch.”
Executive producer Jason Katims admitted that, of course (this is Hollywood) they tried really hard to work that into the show, but Britton nor Chandler was having it, and I think that was absolutely the right call. They certainly didn’t have a perfect marriage, though, and we saw them go through plenty of challenges throughout the series, but they portrayed a much more realistic version of what marriage is really like compared to a lot of what’s on TV and show in movies, and I think that’s part of what resonated so well with audiences. Tami and Eric were far from perfect, but they were loyal to each other and their family.
Katims also said that they never built a set for any scene, and they would have multiple cameras in the room so they could make it as authentic as possible without a ton of takes. It certainly worked, and Britton added that all of the actors felt “ownership” of their characters and really believed in them:
“We all were given such a sense of ownership of the show. We all felt this sense, like, this character is ours and it s a privilege for us to create it, but we didn’t just feel that way, everybody felt like they were part of something that they believed in.”
If you love something and believe in something, it’s pretty easy to sell (that’s probably not even the right word, but you get the idea), and in my humble opinion, that’s absolutely why it was such an incredible show and easily one of my all-time favorites.
@todayshow Connie Britton shared that she and Kyle Chandler pushed for their “Friday Night Lights” characters Tami and Coach Taylor to represent a strong partnership “from the outset,” which meant no affairs from either of the characters, despite writers’ best efforts! #NBC100 #FridayNightLights ♬ original sound – TODAY Show
The full interview is available below, and even grandma Saracen is there, and she has not aged one day… she looks incredible:
