Yahoo Lifestyle Connie Britton Offers Pearls of Wisdom to Upcoming 'Friday Night Lights' Reboot Cast (Exclusive)
Connie Britton, who played Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights from 2006 to 2011, hopes the cast of Peacock's upcoming reboot finds the same "sense of discovery" as she and her costars did during the series' five-season run.
"There was an alignment that happened in that show around what we were trying to do and how we were trying to do it," Britton exclusively told Parade for the March 16 cover story. "And the collaboration was just, from the top down, this beautiful, linear thing."
There was also "such a discovery in the process of what we were able to do on that show," she added. "And so I will hope for [the new cast] that they can find a sense of discovery there in terms of what they're committing to and trying to accomplish."
As revealed in Parade's recent cover story, Britton was pivotal in shaping her character on the original Friday Night Lights, having played a barely-there version of Tami in the 2004 movie. “In the film, there was very little for me to do and even less so by the time it came out — whatever I had done was mostly on the cutting-room floor,” Britton told Parade. “And so when the TV show came around, I said, ‘No, thank you.’ I was really hoping for something more for myself than playing sort of the fly-on-the-wall wife character in a football show.”
Related: 'Friday Night Lights' Cast: Where Are They Now?
Peter Berg, who directed the movie and went on to create the show, was persistent and “very persuasive,” Britton recalled, and eventually she agreed to sign on. "It was a big risk because people say whatever they want to say, and then whether they do it or not is another story," she shared.
"And I really have to say, I worked pretty tirelessly with Pete, but then also with Jason Katims, who came in to run the show, really sort of standing up for the woman's voice in that community, in that world.”
It helped that she had a willing partner in Kyle Chandler, who played Coach Taylor, Tami's husband. "That was just lightning in a bottle," she said. "I could never have imagined that I would find this acting partner who had the same aspirations for the kind of couple that we wanted to portray and was willing to commit to that so deeply. And we just were aligned from day one, and we fought for that with the writers, always very collaboratively. It was such an amazing collaboration."
You know what they say about clear eyes and full hearts — can't lose!
Related: Taylor Kitsch Weighs in on the 'Friday Night Lights' Reboot
