More than a decade after Friday Night Lights ended, Coach Taylor’s iconic motto still strikes a chord with Kyle Chandler.
The 59-year-old actor stopped by NBC’s Today on Wednesday, Jan. 8, to talk about his new action comedy Back in Action, arriving on Netflix on Jan. 17. But host Savannah Guthrie also took the opportunity to pump Chandler for intel on Peacock’s upcoming Friday Night Lights reboot.
Unfortunately, Chandler admitted he’s heard nothing about the new series, which is still in development.
“No calls, nothing,” he said.
“If they call, will you say yes?” Guthrie pressed.
“I don’t know what I’ll say,” Chandler responded.
Chandler went on to say that seeing himself in clips from the Emmy-nominated series, in which he played Texas high school football coach Eric Taylor for five seasons between 2006 and 2011, was “interesting.”
“I actually got emotional, after all these years,” he said of seeing a clip of his character saying his oft-repeated motto, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”
“It’s iconic. We must say it on this show 10 times a week,” Guthrie agreed, before asking a visibly emotional Chandler to repeat the line once more.
The actor obliged, looking directly into the camera and reciting the line with a slight tremble in his voice, before reminding Guthrie and Today viewers to send “good wishes and prayers” those affected by the unprecedented wildfires currently raging around Los Angeles.
While original showrunner and executive producer Jason Katims and writers Peter Berg and Brian Grazer are reportedly returning for the Friday Night Lights reboot, it’s unsurprising that Chandler hasn’t gotten a call about it. The new series, officially announced in December, will reportedly feature an all-new cast and is likely to focus on a different Texas high school football team as their hometown recovers from a devastating hurricane.
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Both Berg and Connie Britton, who played Coach Taylor’s wife Tami, have downplayed the possibility of the original show’s cast — which, over the years, included Taylor Kitsch, Minka Kelly, Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Plemons — returning.
“I don’t see them going back into that story, at least with this cast,” Britton told Entertainment Tonight in 2021. “We know we’ve already had a movie, we already had this TV show, and then if they were to do it again with like, a whole different iteration of it, I don’t know. I would think that would be sort of odd.”
In a 2023 interview with Collider, Berg speculated that if he were to approach Chandler and Britton about appearing the new series, they might say, “Yeah, but why?”
“We have nothing but great memories,” he added. “Why take the chance of coming back, and then we end up hating each other.”
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