Coach Taylor Is Worried We Won’t Like His Boston Accent

Jaguar PS / Shutterstock

Fantastic news for Friday Night Lights die-hards: Kyle Chandler, aka inspirational Dillon Panther, will co-star alongside Casey Affleck for Kenneth Lonergan’s latest movie, Manchester-by-the-Sea.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kyle Chander will play the deceased older brother of Affleck’s character, a “ne’er-do-well plumber” in Boston who is forced to return back to his “titular town” following his brother’s death. The movie, naturally, will be intertwined with plenty of flashbacks.

Though he’s most known for his FNL role, Chandler also had supporting roles in Argo, Wolf of Wall Street, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Spectacular Now. Funny enough, Chandler told THR he found inspiration in Bill Belichick for the iconic Coach Taylor. As it turns out, Kyle Chandler is not—in the words of Tim Riggins actor Taylor Kitsch—”that guy who’s going to sit down on Sunday and watch eight hours of football.”

But, moreover, since joining the cast of Manchester, Chandler has been more worried about portraying a Boston accent. But his concern’s fairly valid, considering track records for actors not from the area show that, well, the accent proves difficult to pull off. And we’re not exactly nice about it.

“You really don’t want to screw that up,” [Chandler] says. His plan is to head up to Scituate, Mass., a week or so ahead of time and hang at bars just listening to locals. “If I’m lucky,” he tells me, “I find some guy who I can give a hundred bucks to read all my lines on a tape and have that to go off of.”

But as long he has clear eyes and a full heart, he can’t lose. Right, guys?