Friday Night Lights alums Jason Katims and Connie Britton talk reuniting on Dear Edward
With Dear Edward, Jason Katims wanted to create a show about life. It just so happens that it starts with a lot of death.
Based on Ann Napolitano's book of the same name, Dear Edward tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who is the sole survivor of a plane crash that kills his entire family. But the upcoming Apple TV+ series doesn't just tell Edward's story. It also follows a number of individuals, all of whom lost someone in the crash, as they attend a grief group and discover the power of found family.
"I read the book and I thought it had potential as a television series that could be very powerful and very moving," Katims (Friday Night Lights, Parenthood) says. "And I just sort of fell in love with it. What I was interested in telling was this story about resilience, a story about people coming back from something that was very hard."
Courtesy of Apple Taylor Schilling and Colin O'Brien on 'Dear Edward'
As Katims started writing the show, he decided to add a character that was not in the book. Dee Dee is a wealthy wife and mother who loses her husband in the crash, and then is left to question how well she knew him in the first place when she discovers that he was keeping a number of secrets from her. In building the character, Katims found himself thinking of an actress he was quite familiar with: Connie Britton, with whom he'd worked for five seasons on Friday Night Lights.
"There was something about this character that just made me smile. I was driving into work and I thought of Connie for the role. And the minute that I thought of her, I could never think of this woman as anybody different than Connie," Katims says. "Working with Connie on Friday Night Lights was just a pinnacle experience. It was unbelievable. Her work is so incredibly beautiful in it. If I was going to work with her again, I wanted to something that , well, that she would do, she would you say 'yes' to, something she would be able to sink her teeth into in a very different way than the character in Friday Night Lights."
Courtesy of Apple Connie Britton and Amy Forsyth on 'Dear Edward'
And it's safe to say that Dee Dee is a far cry from Tami Taylor. Quite frankly the only thing the two women might have in common is a love for his and hers closets. "The experience of Friday Night Lights was one that really set the bar for me in terms of a great experience and what I value in my work experience and my creative experience," Britton says. "So that has meant a lot to me over the years, and the idea of being able to revisit that, and in some ways reaffirm it, which was in fact what happened. Having the experience of working again on a Jason Katims set, it's a lovely environment, it's a collaborative environment, it's an environment of exploration and curiosity and discovery and fun and mutual respect. And those are the things that are most important to me. I was really, really excited to have Jason come to me and have it be such a fantastic part to explore."
Courtesy of Apple Colin O'Brien and Eva Ariel Binder on 'Dear Edward'
Over the years, a lot has been said about what it's like to work on a Katims set, particularly Friday Night Lights. Some of it isn't fully true — the actors do have marks, though maybe not as many as other sets — but the gist of it is that, by using three cameras to shoot a scene, the actors are given more freedom to live in the moment. "It allows for spontaneous things to happen, and it also encourages a certain kind of acting," Katims says. "I always had so much fun watching these scenes that Connie was in, because in every take she would throw something else in that wasn't in the one before. This show has a lot of heavy stuff in it, but one thing that's so beautiful about Connie's character is there's so much light and life and fun to her."
"I think the audience feels included," Britton adds. "We're being honest with the audience."
Courtesy of Apple Anna Uzele on 'Dear Edward'
And when it comes to Dear Edward, that honesty is often about grief. "It's not afraid to talk about grief, which is a wonderful thing," Katims says. "But there's also so much life in it and love and romance and all the things that I'd like to see when I'm watching shows."
"In my experience of grief, there has to be humor alongside it," Britton adds. "The grief that I've experienced in my life has brought every bit of joy and light that I can possibly muster, the people around me can possibly muster, because that's the counterbalance. And so in a way, it's like you almost can't have one without the other. Or maybe we need to learn how to have them together as much as we can."
Courtesy of Apple Connie Britton and Audrey Corsa on 'Dear Edward'
Dear Edward follows its characters as they are delivered the worst news of their lives, and then thanks to the help of a few strangers, find a way to move forward. It's a show about life and loss and love and grief and the people who get us through it all: Family. That's precisely why it felt like the perfect project for Britton to reunite with Katims.
"I was so excited to do this with Jason because it felt like family," Britton says. "I think that if we're fortunate in life, we have a chosen family. And I love the idea of demonstrating that through adversity, that we can actually surround ourselves with community that can lift us up and support us. And I think the show does that in such a beautiful way, but I also think that that is part of what makes it so exciting to be reunited with each other because it feels like family."
Dear Edward premieres Feb. 3 on Apple TV+.
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