Minka Kelly says Friday Night Lights was on the brink of being canceled every season

Kelly played Lyla Garrity on the show, which ran for five seasons from 2006 to 2011

NEED TO KNOW

• Minka Kelly revealed Friday Night Lights faced potential cancelation every season despite its later success
• She compared the show’s struggles to other NBC hits, like The Office, which also worried about being axed early on
• The sports drama, which ran from 2006 to 2011, became a beloved classic with a devoted fanbase over time

Minka Kelly says that while Friday Night Lights was successful in hindsight, it didn’t always feel that way while it was airing.

Speaking on the Tuesday, July 21 episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers, Kelly, 46, said, “It would have been nice at the time to feel it was that successful.”

“You know, we were just on the brink of being canceled every season,” she added. “There was a very interesting thing that happened in that era of NBC, which is: nothing worked.”

Kelly continued: “And now they’re everyone’s favorite shows, genuinely like The Office. Like there’s all these shows that like, I mean, I know the cast members of those shows who are like, ‘Yeah, every year we were like, so worried.’ And then it’s like everybody’s favorite show now.”

In fact, during its five-season run, the show originally aired on NBC for two seasons before moving to DirecTV.

Friday Night Lights was first adapted into the 2004 movie directed by Peter Berg and starring Billy Bob Thornton, Tim McGraw, Amber Heard and Connie Britton from the 1990 nonfiction book about the Permian High School Panthers football team from Odessa, Texas.

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The book and movie later served as inspiration for the series, which centered on the fictional Dillon High School Panthers football team.

After portraying Sharon Gaines in the movie, Britton returned to the franchise as a variation of her movie character, Tami Taylor, who was the wife of Dillon coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler). Kelly appeared in her breakout role as Lyla Garrity during the first three seasons.

Other cast members included Taylor Kitsch, Jesse Plemons and Michael B. Jordan, and the premise remained the same as the film, centering on a close-knit, small-town Texas community where high school football was a way of life.

On May 29, the beloved cast came together for a 20-year reunion at the 2026 ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas, where they reflected on where they believe their characters would be today and the legacy of the show.

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