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Friday Night Lights' cast revved for second season
TV: With one season behind it, 'Friday Night Lights' keeps same lineup
but adjusts game plan
06:30 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 3, 2007
By JOE O'CONNELL / Special Contributor
Show info
Friday Night Lights: Fridays at 7 p.m. on NBC (Channel 5). 1 hr.
AUSTIN – Brian "Smash" Williams takes the handoff. Crack! A defender
immediately levels him. A confused and angry Smash shakes off the hit
and looks around the practice field in defiance. Nearby an assistant
coach chants, "Hit squad! Hit squad!" and high-fives players. Cut.
Actor Gaius Charles, a.k.a. Smash, has fake sweat applied to his arm and
then does it all again.
The tackle is as close to real as it comes on television's Friday Night
Lights. And the added layer of sweat is downright unnecessary while
intense heat radiates on the Austin set this September day as the
critically acclaimed show fights its way into a second season, which
premieres Friday on NBC.

Eric Schlegel / DMN
Gaius Charles plays running back Brian "Smash" Williams
Nothing has come easily for the show that suffered through high
expectations and so-so ratings its first season. Cast and crew were left
hanging as network officials waited seemingly until the last minute to
pick up the series.
"All of us expected to come back," says Scott Porter, who portrays Jason
Street, a former player now in a wheelchair. "We knew what we'd done
quality-wise. We try not to pay attention to ratings, but we know we
live in a fast-food world."
Street faces bigger challenges in Friday Night Lights' second season as
some feeling returns to his hands. "The new coach calls him the mascot,"
Mr. Porter says of his character. "He looks at him as handicapped and
not as a real person. [Street] has recurring dreams of walking, and that
sends him on a soul-searching journey."
More changes
The second-season pickup comes with other changes. Producers say the
show will focus more on character relationships and less on football.
And six days are allotted to shoot each episode, rather than the eight
days allowed during the first season.
"The style still has not changed. We're still on the fly," says Brad
Leland, the Dallas actor who plays sleazy booster Buddy Garrity. "It's
like we never left."
Indeed, the show has spread its roots at the site of the former Del
Valle High School, which was closed and moved when a former air force
base was transformed into Austin's airport a few years ago. Action on
Hermann Field slows as another airplane dips toward the nearby runway.
An end zone sign brags of the fictional 2006 state championship and 55
consecutive games won, following on the tradition of state titles in
'68, '78, '81, '82 and '98. Ads tout businesses in fictional Dillon such
as Lucky Tie Cleaners. The plastic smell of the squishy artificial turf,
which is interspersed with blades of dead grass and dirt, radiates in
the blaring sun.

Eric Schlegel / DMN
The stadium at old Del Valle High School, just southeast of Austin, is
itself a star of the show about small-town sports.
The crew hides from the sun whenever possible under a few umbrellas on
rolling carts as a standing Mr. Porter escorts his wheelchair to the
field. "I told you he was faking," jokes Kyle Chandler, the coach who
leaves his team for a college job at the start of the season.
Nearby Zack Gilford, who plays quarterback Matt Saracen, tosses the
football to Jesse Plemons. Yes, the Dallas native's quirky character,
Landry Clarke, is suited up for football this year.
Drink up
"Is there water down there?" a crew member asks.
"That's the question of the day," another replies.
The camera tracks Benny Ciaramello as he runs back and forth on the
field. Mr. Ciaramello is Santiago, a troubled kid trying out for the
team. The exertion got to him earlier in the day and Raigen Thornton,
the set's paramedic, had to be called in.
"Every day there's someone who won't drink for 30 minutes and they get
in trouble," Mr. Thornton says. "The biggest thing is to keep up with
the re-hydration."
Mr. Thornton is an example of what Friday Night Lights has meant to the
Austin film industry, much as Prison Break has made an impact in North
Texas.
He was working on an offshore oil rig in 1994 when he first noticed the
listing in a movie's credits for a paramedic. The former Odessa police
officer who also fought fires in Kuwait with Red Adair has since worked
72 projects, including 53 films.

Eric Schlegel / DMN
Though acclaimed, Friday Night Lights struggled for a second-season pickup.
"I'm sleeping in my own bed," he says of Friday Night Lights. "I get to
see my wife and my kids growing up."
Cut to the field house.
Signs on the wall read "Tradition never graduates" and "Your opponent
got better today, did you?" In the head coach's office, game tape plays
on a television screen. Issues of Texas Football magazine are scattered
on the coffee table. In the next room the season football schedule lists
imaginary games against imaginary cities Harp, Brickhouser, Chicon. On
the wall is again the listing of Dillon's state championships with –
oops – a few more added in for '58 and '62.
Coaches and players gather around the weight room as bad boy Mr.
Ciaramello easily bench presses 275 pounds. An assistant coach attempts
to add more weight but fumbles with the latch.
"Coach, I don't believe you spend enough time in here," Mr. Chandler
says with a grin. The added weight in place, Mr. Ciaramello huffs and
puffs and hoists the barbell aloft. "Let's see if he can paint a house,"
Mr. Chandler says.
The weights are made of plastic, and the assistant coach is Charles
Green, whose real-world job is in an Austin restaurant. He answered an
online Craigslist ad last year for extras and ended up as Mr. Chandler's
stand-in and with occasional stints as an assistant coach roaming the
background.
"Almost everybody you see here was here last year," Mr. Green says,
pointing at the other assistants, including shoe salesman Pablo Flores,
who wears a bandage on his arm to cover a tattoo that came in handy when
he portrayed a thug at a Dillon neighborhood party in Season 1.
"My goal is for this to be full-time," says Mr. Green, who is trying to
hire an agent. "I joke that I'm working on the show until my bartending
career takes off."
The show's actual stars remain tight-knit. Mr. Porter shares a home with
Mr. Gilford, and the cast is apt to spend downtime together at Lake
Travis or playing basketball. "We're from all parts of the country, but
we are a family here," Mr. Porter says.
Joe O'Connell is an Austin-based freelance writer.