Bill Records, NBC
Though he’s not a television character, Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights has often been held as a standard for coaches — he’s honest, the perfect father figure for lost teens and of course an amazing football mind especially when it comes to quarterbacks.
But in a profile in an upcoming issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Kyle Chandler, who played Taylor, said he didn’t know anything about coaching. In fact, he turns down opportunities to speak to teams and coaches because he’s still not comfortable with that part of his long-running role.
The irony, of course, is that Chandler had reservations about taking the Coach Taylor role. “Billy Bob [Thornton] played the original coach [in the 2004 movie], and I thought, ‘I’m not old enough, I don’t have that,’ ” he says. Plus, he wasn’t exactly a sports buff, much less an athlete. “He’s not that guy who’s going to sit down on Sunday and watch eight hours of football,” says Taylor Kitsch (who played FNL’s Tim Riggins), with whom he bonded during long motorcycle rides. Chandler found inspiration in a biography of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick but acknowledges: “I couldn’t coach my way out of a paper bag.”
Chandler, in something that’s long been said but is still likely to disappoint fans, said there would be no movie starring the TV show’s cast.
“The show ended perfectly,” he says. “It was five seasons, it was really good, and I just didn’t see a movie.”
Read the whole profile here and remember that clear eyes, full hearts can’t lose.
