Back in the game (extended version)

GOOD SPORTS Britton and Chandler continue to score as FNL's Tami and Eric Taylor.

Photo: Virginia Sherwood/NBC

The television academy may have snubbed Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton’s consistently terrific work as small-town Texas football coach Eric Taylor and his wife, Tami, on NBC’s Friday Night Lights (which kicks off its second season Friday 5), but TONY readers were more discerning: The actors were both decisive winners in our first annual Shadow Emmys. During an August visit to Austin, we had the pleasure of spending an hour with Chandler and Britton in Chandler’s trailer while the season’s fourth episode was being shot on location at a Lutheran church. Here’s the complete transcript of the conversation, which appears in abbreviated form in TONY #627.

I wanted to start by saying I’m appalled that you were screwed out of an Emmy nomination.
Kyle Chandler: I didn’t see it as getting screwed out of anything. It all went good.

Well, just being on the air is more important than getting any awards.
Chandler: That’s the way I look at it

Were you sweating the renewal after last season?
Chandler: I put forward to everyone that there was no doubt we were gonna get picked up again. If we didn’t get picked up, I wasn’t gonna see anyone for a long time anyway, so it wasn’t going to come back at me. I was pretty sure that we would, knowing personally that it’s a good show. There’s a lot to be found there. The only thing we need to do now is to get people watching.

Tom Carson of GQ described your work on the show as being “as perfect as series acting gets.” Does something like that put extra pressure on you to deliver?
Chandler: No, it doesn’t.… This sounds hokey, I guess, but I really don’t pay much attention to those things other than the fact that I like to hear the good things and dismiss the bad things. I’ve been doing it long enough to where it’s just like, you’re hot in Hollywood one day… for me, I turn into a bigger fish and get happier swimming around, but then once the show I’m doing is gone, you’re starting out at square one, so I don’t put much credence into the whole… My ego’s not big enough really, I don’t think, to let me get involved. My self-confidence isn’t great enough to let me take it too seriously when I get those accolades. Certainly my wife and kids don’t let me believe too much of it. But it’s a great compliment and I thank him for it. This is a perfect job, and the show for me came at just a perfect time, because I’ve been married now for 12 years and I haven’t ever played a father or someone that’s married in this way, and I’ve been able to use so much of the tools that have accumulated in that box on this show. It’s new. You know as well, the way the show is presented, the way it’s shot and the way the attitude is around this place as to being creative and working with material and exploring things. There is no “wrong” in art. Pretty much you can hang that on a shingle in front of our door. It all just comes together. A lot of people speak about the relationship Connie and I have together and you’ll find out from talking with her, she’s not a bullshitter, she’s straight-up. She’s a really good actress. We both love comedy and we have similar comedic timing, I think. We find similar things funny. We both love acting and love actors. We protect each other onscreen as actors. One thing we’ve found out too is we both enjoy making fools of ourselves, and that makes for a great relationship on just about every level. [Jokingly] Here comes the bitch now. Hey, Connie, come on in, she’ll have something to say about everything.

[Connie Britton enters the trailer.]