[IMG:L]TV’s most touching series is all about America’s favorite contact sport. While on the surface Friday Night Lights seems focused firmly on football, it’s really all about heart. In his role as Eric Taylor, who’s just been elevated from small town high school coach to heading up a collegiate team, actor Kyle Chandler is the rallying point for the show’s ensemble dramatic charge downfield–and for a growing legion of female fans.
“A lot of the times the women will ask me about the men on the show, particularly Kyle–love, love, love,” says Connie Britton, who plays Chandler’s on-screen wife. “People always ask about Kyle Chandler. They always want to know if he’s nice. They’re like, ‘Is he nice, because he’s so cute? Is he nice?’ I’m always like ‘Oh, no. He’s a pill.'”
Hollywood.com: Have you ever seen a better marriage on television or real life as good as the one on your show?
Kyle Chandler: Mine’s a lot better than this one, I can guarantee that. It’s just fun. It’s fun working with Connie. Whenever we’re on the set together, we have a good time. She’s one of those people, we just get together good. She’s a goof. I’m a goof and we protect each other in our scenes. We’re comfortable with each other. We have the same technique on how you go about working. I’ve been married for 11 years, so I think a lot of what I bring to this thing is I steal from my own. I’m sort of doing a little bit of what I know. It’s fun like that because I haven’t had a role where I’ve played anyone where I’ve had a wife and kids and this and that. I’ve been married for 11 years and I’ve got two kids, so this role comes along and oh, wait a second. I know how to be frustrated with a woman. I’m good at that. So it’s fun to play all that stuff.
HW: Do actors and coaches fight over the same sorts of things in a marriage?
KC: Yeah, we have the issues that they write for us basically. We use different tools to get out of them. That’s another thing, Connie and I always look at the material. We’re always constantly looking for something new. It’s sort of a contact sport on our set, because everyone’s trying to outdo the next person. It’s really enjoyable. It’s a fun atmosphere.
HW: What does your wife think of the relationship on the show?
KC: She likes it a lot, actually. She really enjoys the show. They’re looking for that female demographic for this show and it’s there if we can just get the people to watch it. She and so many of her friends who wouldn’t have expected to like the show last year tuned in and said “That’s a great show.” Because they thought it was about football so they didn’t want to watch it. So I think that’s one key to getting some people watching this thing, but she really enjoys it. Every once in a while when I steal stuff from our real life, she’ll look at me across the couch and give me the headshake.
HW: Do you use different acting muscles to play authority over a whole team of people?
KC: No matter who you’re working with, it’s two people working off each other. That’s one thing and then when you’re working off of a crowd. I’ve met a lot of different coaches to try to get a feel of which the best way to go was. I think one coach hit it truest for me when he said, “Out of all the reasons that I do what I do” and they all pretty much said this: “It’s the love of the kids.” They love these kids. Once I heard that, and I was holding this one coach’s baby out on his deck while he was barbecuing, that that sort of made sense to me what it’s all about.
HW: Does the coach have a different affect coaching college kids than high school kids?
KC: I don’t know yet. There’s going to be a difference I think. When you have high school kids, you have kids that haven’t quite formed yet, which is exciting I think for coaches because you’re actually able to mold kids who are still finding out what it is to be a man, if you will. College kids obviously have gone a little bit past that. Then of course when you have a professional player who’s making the money and everything, so it’d be interesting to see how that works out and I think that’s part of the struggle Coach is going to have down at the college. He’s working a little bit more for the kids, as opposed to when he’s the high school coach working with the kids.
HW: What are you looking forward to playing this year?
KC: It doesn’t matter. All these different characters that we’re working with on the show, it’s acting. It’s not rocket science and once you get a bunch of people together and you get some good material that you’re working on and it’s flowing, it’s exciting to do. It’s literally, this show is literally for me like the first day of rehearsal on a play which is the most exciting day. It’s like that every day. There hasn’t been one day, I can honestly promise you, that I’ve gone to work on this show and not said, “It’s going to be fun today. I’m going to have a good time.” Literally. That’s astounding.
HW: Any difference in the energy working in Austin vs. Hollywood?
KC: When you’re in Texas, you’re in the heat! Everything about it, it’s like doing a Tennessee Williams play on a stage outside down south as opposed to doing it in an air-conditioned studio in California. It’s the real energy.
HW: Are you a football fan in real life?
KC: Yeah. When Pete Berg asked me about that question, I told him, “I don’t know the stats of all the players. I don’t know the team standings. I love football, with that said.” I’ve got a 5-year-old and 11-year-old, two girls. I don’t watch much football. When I do, I feel privileged. Yeah, I love pro football and college football and I’ve grown to love going to high school football games and checking the games out down there. It’s just great.
HW: How often are you moved to tears by your own show?
KC: When I watch the performances? Actually, there have been moments. Not my stuff, but watching some of the other characters. There’s a term some of the editors I think some people last year were calling it “That Friday Night Light magic.” That’s something that happens also in the scenes–you can have scripts that you know this is what they want. But those moments, oddly enough, on our show come when you don’t expect it. That’s the freedom that the actors have, not with the lines, not with the dialogue, but the freedom they have and the comfortableness they have on the set with what’s going on that those moments pop. I think that’s a real hook as a viewer, because you’re seeing something that’s really a private moment, almost. There’s a lot of private moments on the show and on the set.
–Reporting by Fred Topel
