In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy contenders who have collaborated on a previous project.Taylor Kitsch starts off his
Taylor Kitsch starts off his Zoom call with Connie Britton by giving her a virtual tour of his home in Bozeman, Montana, where he moved in 2021. He’s standing outside on the deck, pointing out the Bridger mountain range in the distance and some of his favorite hikes.
Kitsch and Britton, who played high school football star Tim Riggins and Dillon High School guidance counselor Tami Taylor, respectively, on the much-beloved drama Friday Night Lights, haven’t seen each other in at least five years. But they easily settle into a hot and comfortable conversation about their lives, that seminal show, and their recent TV projects.
Friday Night Lights gave Kitsch his very first major role. “I had maybe one or two credits to my name,” he says. “I was in an Oscar-winning movie called Snakes on a Plane, so I had a lot of heat on me.” (That’s a joke, of course.) At the time, he was already a fan of Britton’s because of her role on Spin City.
“That was a good show. That was my first thing…. So I was learning on the job,” says Britton.
Their characters’ storylines didn’t often overlap, but Kitsch wishes that they had. “I don’t even want to tell Connie this, but I do remember asking to work with her,” he says.
After Friday Night Lights ended in 2011, both went on to have busy careers, delivering captivating and unexpected performances—especially on television. Kitsch has transformed himself in projects such as the HBO series True Detective, the TV movie The Normal Heart, the miniseries Waco, and the 2023 miniseries Painkiller. He starred in American Primeval earlier this year, playing an elusive mountain man in the American West in 1857.
Britton, who got two Emmy noms for Friday Night Lights, went on to earn more Emmy attention for American Horror Story: Murder House, the musical drama Nashville, and the first season of The White Lotus. Her latest work was done opposite Robert De Niro in the gripping political drama Zero Day.
Here, Kitsch and Britton look back at what they learned from making Friday Night Lights, discuss whether they’ll show up in the upcoming reboot, and reveal which projects they consider to be “the one that got away.”
Vanity Fair: How did Friday Night Lights shape your careers?
Connie Britton: That show just set the bar for what I wanted my artistic worklife to be in terms of how we worked and what our values were. I think I learned a lot from the structure that [series developer] Pete [Berg] created for all of us. We really created an ideal of what a great working environment is, right?
Taylor Kitsch: A hundred percent. It’s like a catch-22, though, because it spoiled us. On one hand, it was a crash course for me. Then right after that, I went on to this Marvel movie, which is nothing but marks and “hit your line.”
Britton: And that’s what I loved about Friday Night Lights—we never shot on a soundstage. Every house was that character’s house.
Kitsch: It was witty because I remember, and I bet you could say the same—at the Riggins house, it was the ultimate comfort zone. And then when I would go to the Taylor house, it was just such a different feel.
Britton: I didn’t even want to go to your house because everybody said there were maggots there.
Kitsch: [Laughs] It was true.
Britton: I was scared of going to your house because it’s disgusting. But meanwhile, for me, the Taylor house was home. Every single time we had a scene in the kitchen or a cooking scene, we really made it. Kyle [Chandler] always cooked the bacon, and everybody in the crew got to eat bacon. Everything that was happening there was happening in real time. There was no greenroom or going back to the trailer. I would change my clothes for the next scene in the bathroom in our bedroom. It was just like home.
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