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'Friday' Co-Stars Show How To Make A Marriage Work

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By MARIA ELENA FERNANDEZ, Los Angeles Times

Published: January 29, 2008

"Don't whisper - yell at me," Coach Eric Taylor retorted during a recent episode of "Friday Night Lights" after his wife, Tami, proved once again during a quiet, intense fight that she's the wiser half.

It was a funny line in its delivery, but it also highlighted a relationship that works for better and for worse, and has been heralded by critics and fans as the best portrayal of a marriage on television.

As brought to life by co-stars Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, the Taylors are not your typical TV spouses. They argue without bickering. They support without resenting. And they are loyal and interested instead of dishonest and indifferent.

No other married couple on TV - except perhaps Allison and Joe Dubois (Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber) on NBC's "Medium" - makes domesticity seem both ordinary and blissful.

Chandler, 42, who is married and has two daughters, says the secret to the success of the Taylor marriage has little to do with the romantic part of the couple's relationship.

"A marriage is a bond between two people and a friendship," Chandler said. "The way we do it, I think, is that the marriage part is secondary to the friendship between the two characters."

The couple's steady give-and-take is one of the cornerstones of a series built around the life of a Texas town in which high school football means everything.

"Friday Night Lights," created by Peter Berg, has a loyal audience of 6.2 million but still hasn't popped as a hit. The series has improved its ratings since NBC moved it to Fridays, ranking second in its 9 p.m. time slot among 18- to 49-year-olds and picking up 38 percent more of those viewers from video-recorder playbacks.

Though its season was shortened by the writers strike, "Friday Night Lights," which is filmed in Austin, Texas, managed to complete 15 episodes.

'A Real Adult Friendship'

In person, the actors who portray the Taylors can seem as if they're stuck in an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." During an interview over breakfast in Hollywood in December, they teased and squabbled about who smells worse, who talks more and how they each landed their roles:

Britton: "Pete had been talking to me about it, and I had been a little foot-draggy, and then I found out it was you, and I was really foot-draggy."

Chandler: "I was foot-draggy, too. And if I had known it was you, I wouldn't have been foot-draggy. I would have been the hell out of there."

Britton: "Exactly. I thought, who is this scumbag that I've never heard of?"

Chandler: "And I thought, who is this dumb broad?"

Britton: "And then they sent me this great 'Grey's Anatomy' episode, which got me hooked on 'Grey's Anatomy,' by the way. And I thought, 'OK, well, he was good in that.'"

Chandler: "And then they sent me 'Carrot Top Does Cincinnati,' and when I saw her, I thought, 'I'm all over this.'"

Britton: "I never did 'Carrot Top Does Cincinnati.' It was Miami. Golly, get it straight.

Straight is not on the menu for these veteran actors. They met the first day of shooting the pilot, and their first scene together called for the wife to hug her husband behind his back.

"Oh, man, it was the beginning of the worst miserable ... year of my life," Chandler taunted.

By the second day, they were calling each other obscene nicknames.

"I thought that was a pretty good sign," Berg, who directed the pilot, said. "Then they talked about driving back to Austin together if the show got picked up, and I thought that could lead to trouble. There are a million different bad scenarios when you drive cross-country together. And they did it, and a real adult friendship was formed."

Exploding, literally, in an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" landed Chandler the "Friday Night Lights" role, even though he wasn't looking for it. Casting director Linda Lowy, who casts "Grey's" and "Friday Night Lights," chose Chandler, who was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal on "Grey's" of a bomb squad leader who dies on the job.

"She was so insistent," Berg said. "His emotions feel like they're emotions that we deal with in our friends and family every day."

Berg didn't consider anyone else for the role of Tami, but it took some convincing to get Britton to sign up. The 39-year-old actress, who is single, had played the part of the coach's long-suffering wife in Berg's 2004 movie of the same title, and she wasn't interested in reprising that.

"I was afraid my character was going to be a supplemental, supporting, good wife again," Britton said. "But Pete said he wanted to do what he couldn't do in the movie - explore this role and this relationship. To me, what makes it special and what makes it unique on television is that it's a partnership. Any conflict that comes up we deal with, but that doesn't break the foundation of the partnership."

"People who watch the show, certainly married couples, find themselves in that marriage," Berg said. "So many people say that to me. Couples say this is something we watch together and feel connected to the universe."

She Calls Him 'Sugar'

There is no question that Chandler and Britton have a warm connection, which might explain why Britton has taken to calling him "Sugar."

Britton: "It makes him so mad!"

Chandler: "It was a little endearing until I realized what 'Sugar' actually equated."

And that would be?

Chandler: "Jackass!"

Britton: "It's that famous Southern woman thing. If you call somebody 'Sugar,' you're basically saying, 'pathetic little loser.'"

Chandler: "I haven't thought of another word for her. I mean, I have, but I can't use it in public. Even on the message machine, she's like, 'Hey, Sugar.'"

Britton: "I've even started putting it in scripts."

Chandler: "Ugh. I haven't come up with one that's appropriately defiling enough."

Britton: "Like 'Honey Bunch!' Oooh! 'Honey Bunch!'"

Chandler: "You muffin!"

Britton: "Anything but muffin!"

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