Is Scott Porter ready to return to Texas? The actor, who played Jason Street on Friday Night Lights, opened up exclusively to Us Weekly about a potential revival.
“Anytime someone mentions getting the band back together on Friday Night Lights, I think about how fortunate we were to tell our story the way we wanted to,” the 39-year-old recently told Us at Freeze HD’s event at Neuehouse Hollywood. “To have people in charge, our incredible writers room, leading the way. And we ended the show on our terms. You know, there’s a lot of shows that end too early and the fanbase and those involved never get the closure that they really need. I think a lot of us from Friday Night Lights all got the closure because it ended so well.”
Friday Night Lights ran for five seasons from 2006 to 2011. When Porter, Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki and other cast members were no longer series regulars after season 3, Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria, Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Dora Madison joined the cast for season 4.
“Everything else is fluid, in my opinion. I don’t even know if you’d see the old cast, because in season 3, we flipped the cast anyway,” the Hart of Dixie alum explained. “The show as just as good, if not better, when Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria came in. The show maintained its level of excellence. I think you can tell new, beautiful, wonderful stories.”
Five people that would have be involved in a revival according to Porter? Peter Berg (developed the show for TV), Sarah Aubrey (executive producer), Jason Katims (executive producer), Kyle Chandler (Coach Eric Tyler) and Connie Britton (Tami Taylor.)
While an onscreen reunion is still yet to be determined, Porter said his former costars are “definitely are always in each other’s orbit.”
“We just saw Jesse [Plemons] not too long ago. I see Gaius [Charles] pretty regularly. I text with Zach [Gilford] all the time. He’s a father now. Jesse’s a father now. Gaius lives right down the street from us,” he told Us. “Matt Lauria is a father now and I still talk to Matt quite often. There are a lot of us that still stay in touch. I even text back and forth with [Taylor] Kitsch every now and then, we saw Minka just last year. I saw Annie in Austin, Texas, Adrianne Palicki.”
He added: “It’s more true of that show than I think of other projects I’ve worked on. We’ve stayed close. I think part of it is because we shot that show in Austin, outside of the whole L.A. machine. We weren’t all running away every night to go party somewhere or go to some event. We were there for each other and had each other’s backs and hung out all the time when we were down there. You can lose touch but regain it in a heartbeat.”
Porter’s wife, Kelsey Mayfield, was by his side at Freeze HD’s event. The pair opened up to Us about her battle with Huntington’s disease at the fundraiser.
“I was diagnosed with Huntington’s about four years ago, my mom was diagnosed five years ago. So, we immediately went to IVF, and had kids, and they don’t have it, we were able to eliminate any embryo that had Huntington’s,” Mayfield explained. “We’ve been raising our kids for the last four years and now we’re ready to get involved.”
“We’ve been living with the idea of Huntington’s in our family for five years now, and to finally get involved is incredible,” Porter added. “I just want to raise awareness that this is a possibility. When people hear about IVF, they think there’s only one reason they’d do IVF, and that’s because you’re having trouble having a baby. But with us, that wasn’t the case. With us, it was going to be a coin flip whether or not they would have Huntington’s Disease. You want to remove those odds.”
Reporting by Taylor Ferber
