| More jeers than cheers
'Friday Night Lights' vixen Minka Kelly feeling backlash
Minka Kelly puts the moves on boys like Taylor Kitsch on NBC's 'Friday NIght Lights,' but don't hold that against her.
By Maria Elena Fernandez,
Hollywood | Love her or hate her - and there's ample evidence on the Web and on the street that many of you choose the latter - please, please, do not call actress Minka Kelly a slut. It's not nice, especially when she's out in public with her father.
"That's not how you approach someone, my God!" she says, over a breakfast of her favorite oatmeal frittata at Hugo's. "I've been with my dad and a man came up to me and said, 'You're that little slut on that show, aren't you?' And I'm like, 'My dad is standing right here!' "
To her further chagrin, Kelly's father seems to get a kick out of how the world is receiving his daughter's Lyla Garrity, the not-so-perfect cheerleader on NBC's Friday Night Lights. His advice: "Oh, shut up. It's not a big deal. Laugh at it."
To a certain extent, Kelly is learning that. For one thing, she doesn't go online anymore to see what the e-chatters are saying about her turn as the girl whose white-picket-fence dreams were shattered when her star quarterback boyfriend was paralyzed in the pilot.
Lyla stood by her man in the series' early episodes but then fell into bed with his best friend, which is about the time the show's fans began their player-hating.
"The biggest thing I wanted to make sure I did was go through this journey with her and have people understand why she's making the decisions she's making," Kelly says. "It's not a superficial thing she does . . . I wanted them to understand that they're common mistakes we all make in life."
To be sure, Lyla is only 17, a delicate age at which to be dealt such a traumatizing blow. In her portrayal, Kelly captures with ease the girl who seems to have everything but turns out to be as confused and insecure as everyone else.
Maybe it's because Kelly is 26, and those torturous adolescent years are not that far behind her. Or maybe it's because when the actress was in high school she committed the same sin as her character: She cheated on her boyfriend. Whatever the case, Kelly is turning heads as Lyla, whether she's being held up on one foot during a cheerleading routine or pleading for forgiveness.
"The whole idea with Lyla Garrity and Jason Street (Scott Porter) was to take the All-American dream couple and deconstruct it and see what happens when you pulverize the American dream," creator and show-runner Peter Berg said.
"And Minka is very hard to characterize as being sweet and wholesome or sultry and mildly diabolical. You feel like she can be your friend, but you also feel if you're not really careful, there's the tiny, teeny little chance that she'll walk off with your boyfriend. She's done a great job of bringing an element of danger, recklessness and angst to a character who might otherwise just be sweet and superficial."
Kelly takes none of it for granted. This is her Big Break, and although she auditioned for the role of Tyra (ironically, the school slut, played by Adrianne Palicki), she was happy to be cast as Lyla. "I would have played a football player to get this job," she says, half-jokingly.
Things are also looking up for Lyla, who surprised the show's fans when she got the gumption several episodes ago to stop wallowing in how Jason didn't want to see her and showed up for an important competition.
"I really love playing her because I feel she is a lot of girls out there, as far as being so in love with a boy that you forget about yourself," Kelly says. "And you're so lost in the relationship that you don't matter. Now, she's coming out of that and opening her eyes to the fact that there's so much more than getting married. She's a really strong girl, but she doesn't know it yet."
To those who are quick to hurl hatred at the impressionable actress, Berg says, wait to see what happens by season's end on April 11.
"The great thing about being torn apart is that you get to be reborn," Berg said. "Everyone loves a comeback, and I think Minka is going to get plenty of chances to redeem herself. And so I think that those same people who are calling her scarlet and a tramp right now are going to be (singing) her praises." |