NYMag: Zach Gilford Ends His Role on ‘Friday Night Lights’

Zach Gilford is sitting in the shadow of Austin fast-food joint Whataburger, watching his co-stars Taylor Kitsch and Derek Phillips shoot a scene of Friday Night Lights. Gilford, who plays Matt Saracen, the unlikely quarterback of the high-school football team of the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, is in his street clothes instead of Matt’s No. 7 jersey because he recently filmed his final full episode, wrapping up three and a half years as the show’s sweet, halting underdog. Everyone is happy to see him but also a little sad. Before leaving, he gives hugs and high fives, imploring anyone and everyone to come to his farewell-Austin bar crawl, for which he’s made “beer-colored” T-shirts, an intricate map with over ten bars, plus directions to the nearest hospital.

The first episode of the fourth season of Friday Night Lights, which premiered two weeks ago on DirecTV (the show won’t return to NBC until late spring at the earliest), could pass as a spinoff. The adult actors are intact, including Kyle Chandler as Coach Eric Taylor and Connie Britton as his wife, Tami, but the younger generation is full of newbies. With the exception of a misguided murder arc in season two, the show favors reality: Most of the students hightail it out of town after graduation. “It’s about Texas high-school football, and once I’m no longer playing high-school football, it’s like, well, what do I do?” says Gilford, who stuck around longer than other actors he started with: Scott Porter and Gaius Charles left last season; Minka Kelly and Adrianne Palicki will be back only briefly. “[Creator] Peter Berg told us in the very beginning that Friday Night Lights was going to be a revolving door of kids.” Gilford can comfort himself with a particularly juicy good-bye arc. “As an actor, you’re jealous of the scenes Zach’s getting this season,” says Kitsch, who is leaving soon too. “It’s so emotional and great.”

via Zach Gilford Ends His Role on ‘Friday Night Lights’ — New York Magazine.

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