E-mail a friendConnie Britton
airdate June 24, 2008
Friday Night Lights star Connie Britton is the only cast member who starred in the film of the same name. The versatile actress has had stand-out roles on several series, including Spin City, 24 and The West Wing. She's also starred in such indie films as The Brothers McMullen, which won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize, and produced and directed a documentary on the orphans of Ethiopia. Britton attended Dartmouth and studied Chinese in Beijing. She's performed in regional theater and off-Broadway productions.
Actress on NBC's "Friday Night Lights," describes how the cast and crew tape the show without rehearsals or blocking. (1:52)
Connie Britton
Tavis: Connie Britton is a talented actress whose credits include "Spin City," "The West Wing," and the film "The Brothers McMullen." She currently serves on the critically acclaimed - stars, I should say, in the critically acclaimed series - easy for me to say - "Friday Night Lights," which is back this fall, thanks to a new deal between NBC and DirectTV. Here now a scene from "Friday Night Lights."
[Clip]
Tavis: Connie, nice to have you on the program.
Connie Britton: Thank you.
Tavis: This is one of those shows that we see from time to time that the critics love, the fans of the show, who know where to see it and when to catch it, love it. The movie did rather well. And yet it keeps struggling, trying to find life.
Britton: Yeah.
Tavis: Why is that, for a show that is this good?
Britton: I don't know; I wish I knew the answer. I wish, I wish we all knew the answer. I think we got a couple of false starts. I think that initially, it came across as a show about football and a show about teenagers, and so it got put into this category of maybe teen angst or it got put into this category of sports, and there were all these articles written about how sports television shows have always failed, with the exception of "The White Shadow."
But I think that we have had to struggle against the perception out there, and what our audiences have found is oh, this is a show about human relationships, and this is a show about people interacting in ways that we can all understand, whether you live in a big city or a small town in Texas, as we do as the characters on our show.
And we show those relationships in a way that is so accessible to the audience that they become really passionate about the show.
Tavis: You gave some of this already, give some more for those who have not seen the show. It is, of course, set in Texas.
Britton: Yes.
Tavis: And the storyline is?
Britton: Well, it's set in a small town in Texas, a town called Dillon, which is actually a fictional town, and -
Tavis: You guys shoot in Austin, though.
Britton: We shoot in Austin. And it is - the story is based around the impact of football in this town. It's a town that's very impassioned about their high school football team. I play the wife of the coach of the football team, and as audience members you become very intent on the lives of these young football players and the parents of the football players and our family.
Our family has become a very sort of central part of what happens in the town because it's almost - in a small town like that, where football is the way out or the way up, the coach and the wife are almost like royalty, in a way. But really, and then my character is also the counselor at the high school, so I get to interact with the high school characters and all these different characters.
But really, through the eyes of all of this community, we get to explore so many issues, whether it's issues about racism or sexism or growing up poor or trying to be a good parent or being a good wife or being a good husband, and these are things that we can all relate to.
Tavis: I wonder sometimes - this is not just about your show - I wonder sometimes - no offense to the audience - whether or not sometimes television is too smart. Or put another way, we say we like to connect to human stories, but sometimes when we give them to the people, they don't seem to gravitate to them sometimes.
So I wonder whether it's too smart, whether it's too real, whether it's too something for the audience to even embrace. Does that make sense?
Britton: Yeah. I've heard that argument before, but I, like you, would be really hesitant to say that -
Tavis: You almost don't want to say that.
Britton: Yeah, to say that well, we're too smart for an audience, that's not really a way to get viewers. (Laughter) So I would not - and I don't actually think that that is the case, really. I actually think that what I love about our show, and I think what people are finding - and I think we are building an audience. I think what people are finding is that it's not about intellect, it's just about human relationships and so it doesn't matter how smart you are.
Listen, I come from a small town in Virginia and I've been everywhere from L.A. to New York to Virginia and all kinds of towns in between, and I have met people of every demographic who are loving the show. And so I think it's just - but I do think that our show, one of the things I love about our show is that we allow for the quiet moments.
We allow for those moments where people really don't know what's going to happen next. And part of that, we get the luxury of that as actors because of the way we shoot our show, which I'll talk to you about, too, which is a very unique thing, and which makes our show something that's never been done on TV before.
So there's a certain quiet to our show that I think maybe especially people who are just, like, going to tune in for a half an hour. They just want a bang for their buck, and our show is something that the audience really invests in.
Tavis: I think sometimes we don't like to think. We live in a world where we want to be entertained so much - and I love entertainment. Sometimes you want to go to a movie, sometimes you want to see a TV show that's just pure entertainment.
Britton: Yeah.
Tavis: Some days -
Britton: Popcorn.
Tavis: Exactly. Some days I have such long and tough days, I want some mindless television.
Britton: Yeah.
Tavis: So I'm as open to that as anybody else. But on a consistent basis, if you're making them think, if you're connecting with their emotions, if the storyline is wrenching for them, I just wonder whether or not we live in a world now where people are just so struggling with their own lives that it's hard to -
Britton: That's a really interesting point, and I think that there is some validity to that. My dad used to say - my dad, who grew up in the South in small towns and raised our family in a small town in Virginia, he used to say one of the things that he loved about our show so much is the reality of the characters.
And he was, like, "These are not superheroes and they're not doctors and they're not lawyers and they're not CSI crime unit. These are people like you and me." And I think sometimes that people go to TV specifically for an escape. They want something that's bigger in their life.
And I think another piece of what you're saying too, actually, my friend was just saying to me a little earlier today that one of the unique things about our show and other shows, like for instance "Madmen," apparently, is also this way, is that it allows the audience a chance to watch the action and then you, as an audience member, are allowed to create whatever your experience is of that.
So as opposed to being hit over the head, which is, I think, a lot of times sort of the tradition of television, it's like it's a very obvious plot and the characters are very big and obvious, and then you, as an audience, are told what you're supposed to think about that plot and those characters.
And our show is a much subtler way of showing human relationships, so therefore it makes more of an impact, I think, ultimately on the audience, because you're allowed to have your own experience of it, and it goes deeper.
Tavis: As an actor, as a person, how does this in any way mirror your small town growing up?
Britton: Well, I'll tell you what, when I was growing up, high school students weren't having as much sex as they are on our show. (Laughter)
Tavis: Not in Lynchburg, Virginia, huh?
Britton: Nuh-uh, y'all.
Tavis: You know why? Because Jerry Falwell was looking like this. (Laughter)
Britton: Exactly, Jerry Falwell was right there.
Tavis: In Lynchburg, Virginia, yeah.
Britton: So I actually, like at one point I had a conversation with the writers and I said, "Can we just make sure that one of our lead high school girl characters doesn't have sex? Can we just hold on to that just element of it? Can we not have them all just be completely sexually active?" I don't know, maybe that is what's happening.
Tavis: Too much to ask for, huh?
Britton: Yeah, but I - well, no, they did, they did. But my - the town where I grew up, football was a big deal, but not as big a deal as it is in this town.
Tavis: First of all, in Texas, period, there is nothing bigger than football in Texas.
Britton: There's nothing bigger. Well, and that's - what's interesting, our show is based on the movie and the book by HG Bissinger, which was written in the '80s. And he specifically wanted to write about America's fanaticism with football, and so he went down to Odessa, Texas and moved in for a year and wrote his book.
But we're a fictionalized modern-day version of that, but the thing that I always tell people who may be turned off by the football aspect of it, because by the way, I'm not a football fan, I hate to admit. But it's true, although I've grown to appreciate it in working on the show.
But what I always tell people is that this is just a group of people who share one interest, and so we can all relate to that, because we all live in communities where there's something that everybody's excited about. So the football is sort of a side note to that.
Tavis: I mentioned this earlier, so for folks who don't get this, not sure that I do. How does this NBC-DirecTV thing work next season?
Britton: I know, it's - well, my understanding of it is - and first of all, we're so excited. We're so excited to be back.
Tavis: Yeah, I'm sure.
Britton: We're just thrilled that we're going to have a third season, and our fans are thrilled, and I actually think that more people are catching on to the show, so people are catching it on DVD, they're catching it on computer and TiVo. But DirecTV is going to be great, I think. What they have orchestrated, they're sort of joining forces with NBC and so the show is going to air first on DirecTV starting in October and it's going to air a full season of 13 episodes - we're only going to do 13, which is what most cable shows do. And then the show will re-air on NBC starting in February.
Tavis: Oh, okay.
Britton: So, DirecTV gets a little push because the show's going to be there first, and they're hoping that that will encourage people to subscribe so that they can watch the show.
Tavis: You said earlier, before I let you go, you said earlier that the show was shot a little differently than most other shows.
Britton: Yeah.
Tavis: You didn't explain, though.
Britton: This is where we, as actors, are just so lucky, because what we do is something that Peter Berg, who created the movie and then also created our show, it's sort of his style that he developed and that we have sustained on our show. But it's very loose, we do not rehearse, we don't have marks.
Like usually when you watch a show, they place marks on the floor and the actors -
Tavis: Stand here, stand there.
Britton: - you move from here to here to here to here. And on our show, we have three cameras, three or four cameras rolling all the time, so we meet before. I will often meet with Kyle, who a lot of my scenes are with Kyle Chandler, who plays my husband on the show, and we'll meet up and we'll talk about what we want to happen in the scene, what our intentions are in the scene, what's really happening with these characters, and then we walk in and the director will tell the cameras kind of okay, you catch this part of the story, you catch this part of the story, and the cameras will be placed.
A lot of times I won't even know where the cameras are in the room, and we'll walk in and we'll just start doing it. And so that makes for very spontaneous, organic moments that I think to an audience you feel almost like you're a fly on the wall.
Tavis: Imagine that, actors with freedom.
Britton: Yeah. Creatively - and by the way, camera crew with freedom. Everybody with freedom. Our camera crew - and I always say this; after season one, I realized it - absolutely, those cameras are the ones that are telling our story. We don't have to do a thing. They're doing - they have so much freedom to really move so they catch little moments, a move of the hand or a tapping of the foot or whatever. They have the freedom to catch all of that, and they love it as much as we do.
Tavis: Well, you now have the freedom to leave.
Britton: Oh, well, thank you.
Tavis: Thanks for coming to see us.
Britton: Thank you.
Tavis: I enjoyed that immensely, and you have the freedom, and hope you'll take it, to watch "Friday Night Lights" on DirecTV, NBC, you can catch it.
Back to June 24, 2008