A tough lesson. Revealing her side of their relationship for the first time, Minka Kelly got real about how her romance with Taylor Kitsch affected her other relationships on the set of Friday Night Lights.
“All the effort I might have invested in connecting consistently with the girls on the show went to Taylor,” the Roommate actress, 42, wrote in her memoir, Tell Me Everything, according to the Daily Beast. “So when my relationship with Taylor became toxic, I had no one to turn to.”
Kelly and Kitsch, 42, starred in the sports drama which aired from 2007 to 2011. The 500 Days of Summer actress left the NBC hit after season 3, but returned briefly during season 4. Kitsch, for his part, was a series regular for the first four seasons and had a guest role for season 5. Their characters, Lyla and Tim, were love interests that were involved in their fair share of drama on the screen, including a love triangle in season 1 with Tim’s best friend, Jason (portrayed by Scott Porter). Off screen, things got rocky too.
The Titans star admitted in her tell-all that she and the John Carter actor “shacked up” too quickly despite being warned by the show’s executive producer Peter Berg not to get involved with each other. Kelly went on to explain she and Kitsch were on-again and off-again “more times than [she] [could] count” and while the pair weren’t together their working relationship became hard to manage.
“Life became very difficult both on and off set whenever we broke up. We were young and had very few tools to handle our emotions and personal grievances,” she penned. “On the days we had to work together and were broken up, he didn’t want to be in the hair and makeup trailer at the same time I was. We couldn’t ride in the van together from base camp to set for the same reason. On those days, the tension on set was high and everyone felt the awkwardness.”
In her memoir, the Euphoria actress claimed that she did not receive any support from her fellow Friday Night Lights costars — which also starred Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Aimee Teegarden, Zach Gilford and more – when she called it quits with Kitsch. Instead, she alleged that he was the one who got comforted because the Battleship star was more open with “sharing his feelings.”
“I’d show up to work with a smile on my face thinking I was being professional, while everyone else felt sorry for the guy whose heart had just been broken,” she confessed. “My coworkers weren’t taking me out for drinks after work to mend my broken heart; they were taking him out.”
While Kelly and Kitsch did not work out, the Just Go with It star revealed that the relationship was a learning experience.
“Vulnerability begets connection, as evidenced by the outcome of both our coping mechanisms,” she reflected. “My tough-guy approach only left me alone. If you behave as if you need no one, if no one around you knows any better, most certainly, no one will, in fact, be there.”
At the time of the show’s release, the actors kept their romance private. However, in 2018 Kitsch confirmed to Andy Cohen that he and Kelly dated but did not give any details.
Tell Me Everything hits bookstores on May 2, 2023.
