Taylor Kitsch will never do a Friday Night Lights movie – and please stop throwing out your cigarettes
In 2006, Taylor Kitsch auditioned for a new TV show called Friday Night Lights by downing two Lone Star beers on camera, giving the now infamous Texas Forever speech, and hoping for the best.
Eleven years on – and six years after the critically acclaimed cult TV series ended – Kitsch only has three words for those rumours about a film reboot.
‘Oh my God,’ he laughs.
‘Oh my God. I’m not doing it. I don’t think it will happen to be honest.’
Kitsch has come a long way from those days of Riggins, tall boy beers and Texas but now, at aged 36, he’s finally getting into his groove, working on his directorial debut, a mix of TV and film work – and driving motorbikes across the American plains.
‘I drive motorcycles and I just went through Montana and Wyoming and it’s just eats me alive when people just throw cigarettes out [their windows] when they’re done,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.
‘If you’re camping, everyone wants a fire – but you’ve got to listen to the fire vans! And yet you still see these people doing this, and it kills you that people don’t understand the repercussions of that.’
Kitsch’s angers comes as we discuss his new drama Only The Brave, which immortalises the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots who died as they battled the raging Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona on June 30 2013; the greatest loss of life for firefighters in a wildfire in eight decades and the greatest loss of firefighters in the United States since the September 11 attacks.
The film is a devastating look at the Prescott Fire Departments hotshots – elite teams of 20 wildland firefighters who battle the most serious fires across the US – and their real life friendships, romances, and family lives of those same brave men.
Miles Teller portrays McDonough, the fire’s lone survivor, along with Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges, James Badge Dale, and Kitsch.
The Yarnell fire was started by lightening however wild fires have increased in numbers and severity in recent years, and although NASA admits that ‘climate change has increased fire risk in many regions’ there is also a large role played by humans in the risk.
‘I hope there’s a consciousness that will be raised with this film, that you can easily start something with just “that”,’ he adds.
‘It only happened three years ago so it felt really raw and we celebrated the third anniversary while we were shooting. You just want to do everything in your power to play these guys honestly.’
‘[This film] couldn’t be more relevant – my hometown was got a few years ago with a huge wildfire and even this year there’s a 100 different wildfires around that area, my best friend had a cabin near there and they got evacuated this summer three times. They’re getting worse – an hour away there was a big one when we were shooting in Albuquerque and you could see the flames from on top the mountains.’
The Canadian actor stars as Christopher Mackenzie, a 30-year-old Californian native who had always wanted to be a firefighter, like his father.
He gets emotional and clearly cares about this role when he talks about the prep involved, which included spending time with Mac’s father Mike – ‘we still text back and forth’ – and hanging out with McDonaugh.
‘I had the best source in McDonaugh, his roommate and the only survivor,’ he says.
‘So we would hang it and have a beer and he’d tell me these amazing stories of them going out and just filling in as much as you can – any time you want to get the real info on someone you go to their best friend first so, it was an awesome experience.’
‘You needed to get to know who these guys were, when they’re not in their yellows, who are they and what makes them tick,’ he says.
The cast and crew spent two weeks on a training course before the film began so they could get a feel for how the Hotshots worked – ‘it was a boys club!’ laughs Kitsch – hanging out with each other.
‘We really made the most of the two weeks before filming with the Hotshots, hanging out before and after set. Miles would put basketball games together and everyone would show up,’ he says.
Kitsch says 100% of his scenes were filmed on location, with the crew building a ‘three plus acre set with aluminum trees that they filled with huge propane tanks so they could turn it on and off’.
It sounds terrifying but it’s clear that for Kitsch nothing but getting his hands dirty and getting a real sense for who these men were would do for him.
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