Friday Night Lights

“I wasn't obsessed with football before this,” Hernandez said. “I was into the game. I grew up in LA. I sort of watched the Raiders play and that sort of thing. But in film you always watch situations or stories that you really have no relation to. A lot of times just because there's no personal connection oesn't mean you can't connect with the film or the characters in the film. A lot of times with acting, you do things you've never done before. Whether it's sword fighting or throwing a ball or martial arts or something, the range is really endless. All the people in those fields have something to teach us. It's like we're the students at that point. Although they may feel awkward in front of the camera, we sometimes feel awkward doing the physical things that they do very professionally. So it's just kind of a learning processes. We teach them a little bit. They teach us.” Lucas Black appreciated the physicality of the role. “[Director] Peter [Berg] wanted us to bring it all,” Black said. “He didn’t want us to hold nothing back. He told us he wanted this film to be intense and he really wanted to show the dramatized side of high school football. He told us that there were no limitations, to bring it all and if he wanted us to do something different, he would tell us.”

Lee Jackson wanted to make sure he gave the emotional core of the character as much attention as the physical. “I had a conversation early on with Derek, who played Boobie, just about acting, how you approach it and this script and stuff and he was telling me that his whole philosophy centered around heart, putting his heart into his work and bringing his heart to his characters. I learned a lot on this movie and that was one of the things I think I learned and one thing I tried to do with Chris, put my heart into that portrayal.”

The auditions for Friday Night Lights proved to be more like football tryouts than casting calls. Garrett Hedlund recalled, “Mainly with Pete it was pretty much an improv exercise, at least for me. You weren’t really given the definite script so you basically had to read the novel to get to know the character and understand him where you could have a conversation ultimately, as him in a room before production.”

Black added, “We didn’t have a script to go by at the time. They were still writing the script and they had past scripts but Pete really didn’t want us to see those so he kind of had us go by the book for our characters. When I sat down with Pete and auditioned, he said, ‘Okay, picture you being in a game. You just threw five touchdowns. You’re on top of the world. I’m going to be the coach and you just work with me.’ That’s kind of the way I auditioned. It wasn’t really a part that he read. He just would kind of spin off lines to me and we just kind of work together on a scene there just like me and you talking here. It was just all improv.”

Jackson found the auditions more visceral than nuanced. “When I came in to read, they had just one standard piece of football player dialogue, like some guy trying to pump up people on the sidelines. So I was just showing some intensity, some passion and then just talking to Peter and let him know a little bit about me and let him see if I had something he felt that he could work with.”

Physical training for the part was intense. Luke, who plays the most athletically talented player, Boobie Miles, may have had the most strenuous workout. “Mine was that we would do two a day,” Luke said. “In the morning you had to put heat pads on your knees and your body to get warmed up because it's cold outside. And then after three or four hours we would have to go and have lunch and come back for another. So we would have two. In the beginning of the day we would have to put heat pads on. At the end of the practice you would put ice on your knee. When you come back from lunch you put heat pads on your knee, and the thing about it was it was so cold outside your walking around with tapes of ice around your knee. So I was acting like a baby and I was looking at the other football players to see whether I should say something. Everybody just seemed cool. ‘This is just Texas.’”

Injuries were inherent to the production as well. “I took all my hits,” Hernandez said. “I got hurt. I was I think the only one. One of the biggest guys out there, this guy O.J, he just -- I don't know what happened. It was kind of a scuffle that took place after a play and he fell on my leg and I heard a big pop. I thought it was broken because this guy was just massive. And I ended up getting x-rays and it was alright, just had a pretty bad sprain. But I did take hits too and give a couple of hits. It was hard when it was 5 a.m. you've been waiting for so long that I fell asleep so they woke me up I ran to the set we were trying to get this shot off before the sun came up and it was kind of painful.”