Jesse Plemons Addresses ‘Weird’ Murder Subplot From ‘Friday Night Lights’ Season 2
Jesse Plemons is sharing his thoughts on one of the stranger plotlines from cult-favorite TV series Friday Night Lights.
These days, Oscar nominee Plemons is known for his roles in acclaimed films such as Bugonia, The Power of the Dog, and Killers of the Flower Moon. But his breakout role was playing nerdy teen Landry Clarke on football drama Friday Night Lights, from 2006 to 2011.
Landry was a supporting character on the show. In season 1, he provided comic relief as Matt Saracen’s (Zach Gilford) best friend and member of the Christian metal band Crucifictorious. But his role got meatier in season 2, when the writers gave him a surprising – and deadly – storyline.
Jesse Plemons calls Landry murder storyline a ‘double-edged sword’
In Friday Night Lights’ sophomore season, Landry gets close to Dillon’s resident bad girl Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki). Landry is one of the few people who knows that Tyra was assaulted at the end of season 1. In season 2, her attacker resurfaces and begins stalking her, leading to a confrontation that left viewers stunned.
When Landry and Tyra make a snack run, the stalker attacks Tyra in the parking lot. Landry rushes to her defense, hitting him over the head with a lead pipe. The panicked pair decide to drive the man to the hospital, only to discover that Landry’s blow was fatal. Rather than confess what really happened, they dump his body in the river.
The out-of-left-field plotline left many Friday Night Lights viewers – and Plemons himself – scratching their heads.
“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,” Plemons recently said on EW’s The Awardist podcast. “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.”
‘Friday Night Lights’ actor worried Landry’s season 2 story might ‘sink the show’
Friday Night Lights had earned praise for its realistic portrayal of small-town high school life and relationship, which made the season 2 murder twist that much harder to swallow. Plemons described the murder as a “really extreme storyline that does not seem too rooted in something realistic.”
He also said he felt pressure to sell the idea of the mild-mannered Landry as a killer.
“How am I going to not sink the show with this and try and keep it as real as everything else?” he said he wondered.
Plemons added that it took several tries with different kinds of weapons to get the infamous murder scene right.
“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.”
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