Jesse Plemons Says He Was "Shocked" to Read the Murder Storyline in His Hit Teen Series FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

We are big fans of the series Friday Night Lights here at GeekTyrant. It’s a fantastic show with well thought out character development and story telling, and a nostalgic feeling baked in that kept us engaged through the seasons, and for me, keeps me coming back every few years for a rewatch. But as with any show, even our favorites, there are a few plotlines that are meant to shock the audience and maybe have us asking what the hell we are looking at.

One of those in Friday Night Lights was when the characters Landry Clarke, played by Jesse Plemons, and Adrianne Palicki’s Tyra Collette are seen talking at a gas station and Tyra is appoached by her stalker who attempts to assault her.

Landry immediately comes to Tyra’s defense and smashes the guy’s head with a pipe. The stalker dies on the way to the hospital and Landry and Tyra, in a panic, then dump his body into the river.

In an appearance on Entertainment Weekly’s The Awardist podcast, Plemons said he was “pretty shocked” when the storyline was revealed.

He explained:

“They didn’t tell me that something bad was gonna happen or I was going to be killed off or something, so I wasn’t worried about that. But it was kind of a double-edged sword because on the one hand, I was as shocked as everyone to read that script where the comedic relief kills for love in high school. But at the same time, I don’t think I could allow myself to question it too much, because it was happening.”

Plemons also noted that the series had a high “level of realism,” making it even harder to pull off a “really extreme storyline that does not seem too rooted in something realistic”. He said he also wondered, “How am I going to not sink the show with this and try and keep it as real as everything else?”

Plemons said they settled on using the pipe as a murder weapon, after trying several other options. “I did end up killing him multiple times with bottles and then we reshot it with a pipe or something,” he said. “It’s a weird, weird, weird thing we do.”

Eventually, both Landry and Tyra were cleared of the crime and by Season 3, the plotline had been dropped.

Plemons went on to get an Academy Award nomination for his performance in the film The Power of the Dog (2021), which he starred in alongside his wife, Kirsten Dunst, who he met while making the series Fargo. Plemons can currently be seen in the awards contender Bugonia.

via: Deadline