Minka Kelly is quite literally telling all in her new memoir Tell Me Everything, out May 2, including some new details about her former relationship with Friday Night Lights co-star Taylor Kitsch.
The book, described by Kelly as a “tribute to her mother and all working-class single mothers,” details her rough childhood, past abusive relationships and eventual rise to becoming one of Hollywood’s most employable actresses. Kelly also has plenty to spill about her highly publicized romantic life. Since starring on NBC hit show Friday Night Lights, the actress has been linked to major celebrities like Chris Evans, John Mayer, Derek Jeter, Jesse Williams and Trevor Noah. However, she’s only mentioning one famous ex-partner by name.
In the book, Kelly writes about her failed relationship with Kitsch, who played the troubled football player Tim Riggins, and how it distanced her from the other actresses on the series. Interestingly enough, her character, cheerleader Lyla Garrity, had few friendly interactions with the series’ other female protagonists throughout her four-season tenure.
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“All the effort I might have invested in connecting consistently with the girls on the show went to Taylor,” she writes in the chapter, “Cancer.” “So when my relationship with Taylor became toxic, I had no one to turn to.”
In the Emmy-winning series, Kelly and Kitsch’s characters were also romantically involved in a rather tumultuous way. A major plot point in Season 1 is an explosive love triangle between her, Riggins and his best friend Jason Street (Scott Porter). The two amicably end their off-and-on romance when Garrity goes away to college.
In Tell Me Everything, she admits that she “shacked up” with Kitsch too quickly. The actress also writes that she was warned by Friday Night Lights’ executive producer Peter Berg not to court her co-star once he spotted their chemistry.
The author says that neither party was mature enough to navigate their uncomfortable working situation once they parted ways. She adds that they ended up separating and reuniting “more times than [she] [could] count.”
“Life became very difficult both on and off set whenever we broke up,” she says. “We were young and had very few tools to handle our emotions and personal grievances. On the days we had to work together and were broken up, he didn’t want to be in the hair and makeup trailer at the same time I was.”
“We couldn’t ride in the van together from base camp to set for the same reason,” she continues. “On those days, the tension on set was high and everyone felt the awkwardness.”
Kelly goes on to write about the lack of support she received from her castmates, compared to Kitsch, after she called off the relationship. However, she notes that the now-42-year-old actor was more comfortable “sharing his feelings” with the cast than she was.
“I’d show up to work with a smile on my face thinking I was being professional, while everyone else felt sorry for the guy whose heart had just been broken,” she says. “My co-workers weren’t taking me out for drinks after work to mend my broken heart; they were taking him out.”
When Friday Night Lights was airing, Kelly and Kitsch’s relationship was mostly kept private, with neither actor explicitly confirming the relationship. However, rumors of their romance had circulated online. In a 2018 radio interview on Andy Cohen Live, the John Carter star finally confirmed that they had dated when Cohen brought up Kelly, although he didn’t divulge any details.
Overall, she credits her fallout with Kitsch to being “very young and very sensitive.” Still, she says the relationship taught her a lesson about openness and vulnerability.
“Vulnerability begets connection, as evidenced by the outcome of both our coping mechanisms,” she writes. “My tough-guy approach only left me alone. If you behave as if you need no one, if no one around you knows any better, most certainly, no one will, in fact, be there.”
