- - Jesse Plemons Worried Landry’s “Friday Night Lights” Murder Plotline Would ‘Sink the Show’

Victoria EdelJanuary 1, 2026 at 2:32 AM

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Jesse Plemons on 'Friday Night Lights' -

Jesse Plemons opened up about why he really thought about a Friday Night Lights storyline that saw his character commit murder

Plemons joined Friday Night Lights in its first season in 2006

The actor said he was afraid he would "sink" the show

Jesse Plemons also struggled with Landry’s murder plot on Friday Night Lights.

Plemons, 37, opened up about his time on Friday Night Lights, and the infamous plot that saw his character Landry kill a guy, on Entertainment Weekly’s The Awardist podcast. The Bugonia star began playing Landry on the series in 2006 when he was 18.

In season two of the series, Landy and Adrianne Palicki's Tyra Collette are talking at a gas station when Tyra is approached by her stalker. He tries to assault her. Landry defends her and bashes her stalker’s head with a pipe. On the way to the hospital, the stalker dies, and they dump his body into the river.

Bill Records/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty

Adrianne Palicki (left) and Jesse Plemons on 'Friday Night Lights'

Plemons said he was "pretty shocked" when he found out about this plot.

"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," he said. "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 said the series had a high “level of realism,” which made it even more challenging to pull off this "really extreme storyline that does not seem too rooted in something realistic.”

He wondered, “How am I going to not sink the show with this and try and keep it as real as everything else?”

Plemons also said on the podcast that they tested multiple murder weapons before deciding on the pipe.

"I did end up killing him multiple times with the bottles and then we reshot it with a pipe or something," he said. "It's a weird, weird, weird thing we do."

The plotline proved unpopular with fans and critics. Thankfully, Landry and Tyra avoided the consequences of the murder all season, and by season three, the plot was dropped completely.

Jesse Plemons on 'Friday Night Lights'

Plemons also reflected on the podcast about how Friday Night Lights helped inspire his acting career going forward.

"It was definitely huge in terms of that was my first series regular and it was the most I had worked," he said. "But I think what it did more than anything was just kind of inspire me creatively because it was such an unusual scenario for a network television show and we were given so much freedom and encouraged to really make the parts our own."

The series, he said, "made me fall in love with acting in a different way, just being given that kind of… that freedom and that responsibility."

Since his tenure on Friday Night Lights, he’s appeared in TV shows like Breaking Bad, Fargo, Black Mirror and Love & Death. He received an Oscar nomination for his role in 2021’s The Power of the Dog, and has starred in Killers of the Flower Moon, Kinds of Kindness and this year’s Bugonia. He’s set to star in 2026’s Digger and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

Last year, news broke that a Friday Night Lights reboot is in the works at Peacock. It is expected to have a new cast. Friday Night Lights began as a 1990 nonfiction book by H. G. Bissinger. That was adapted into a 2004 film, which in turn was adapted into the 2006-2011 TV series. The series also starred Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Aimee Teegarden, Scott Porter, Minka Kelly, Zach Gilford and Taylor Kitsch. Later cast additions included Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett.

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