NEED TO KNOW
Zach Gilford and Jesse Plemons knew this infamous Friday Night Lights plot was ridiculous.
Gilford appeared on the Oct. 6 episode of Pod Meets World, hosted by Boy Meets World stars Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle to talk about his career, including his time as Matt Saracen on the beloved NBC football drama, which aired from 2006 to 2011. The actor revealed that he first auditioned for Taylor Kitsch’s role as Tim Riggins before they moved him on to audition for Matt, the young, introverted quarterback who’s forced to lead the team. He also told the hosts that the initial person they cast as Matt had “already been pre-booked on a Disney TV movie,” so they cast him instead just days before shooting began.
“A couple of years ago, for the first time ever I went back and watched some of the show,” Gilford said. “And I was really not surprised, but excited how well it held up.” It made him appreciate some of the actors on the show even more, especially Adrianne Palicki who played Tyra Collette.
Bill Records/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
He said the actress “fleshed out” a character who was originally written to be a “promiscuous tall blonde who’s not a cheerleader.” “She just brought so much to it,” he said. “And then, you we had the infamous season two storyline of the murder with Jesse Plemons.”
That plot line, in the show’s second season, saw Plemons’ Landry Fields hit a man in the head with a pipe twice after the man tried to force himself on Tyra. On the way to the hospital, the man died, and they panicked and dumped his body into the river.
“Only a future Oscar-nominated actor and Adrianne could pull off this plotline because the whole time I’m watching it, I’m like, ‘This storyline is so bad, but they’re so good at acting it,’” he said.
Fishel said she wanted to talk about the plot line since it was the only bad plot from the show. Gilford shared that the initial idea for the plot happened at the end of season one, and it was filmed for the season one finale.
“I remember reading it and talking to Sarah Aubrey, one of our producers, and I wasn’t involved in it. I was like, ‘This seems like a bit of a stretch,’ ” he said. Aubrey agreed but said that because the writers loved Tyra and Landry together, they wanted to find more ways to tie them together. Aubrey told him he’d be “happy” when the finale aired because the murder had been cut.
Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty
“And then we go back for season two. They’re like, ‘But we loved it so much,’” he said. The actor came back and got murdered again.
Though Tyra and Landry spend episodes worried they’re going to get caught, by season three the show dropped the plot and never revisited it or mentioned it.
“I think it’s one of the beauties of TV is you can just pretend things didn’t happen,” Gilford said. But on set, he and Plemons, 37, would “always mess around” and the murder often came up.
“We got to improv a lot,” he said. “And so often in scenes for the duration of the show, we’d be shooting some scene in the locker room or something, and just out of nowhere be like, ‘Oh, hey. Hey. Wait. Remember when you murdered that guy? That was crazy. Anyway, I’m glad you got away with it. Who are we playing this week?’ ”
Gilford also said during the episode that fans still ask him about the show all the time, and he’s honored. “It’s so cool to be associated with something that holds such a special part in people’s lives,” he said. “And I think as actors, you’re lucky to have one project really kind of strikes with people. And I think for me, I always feel kind of like because I play make believe for a living, to have people validate that, for me, that I did something good, is really nice.”
Since Friday Night Lights, Gilford has also appeared in the Mike Flanagan horror projects Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club and The Fall of the House of Usher. This fall, he stars in the new film After All.
Last year, Peacock announced they’re developing a Friday Night Lights reboot.
