Minka Kelly Details “Toxic” Relationship With ‘Friday Night Lights’ Co-Star Taylor Kitsch: “I Had No One to Turn to”

Friday Night Lights star Minka Kelly opened up about her “toxic” relationship with her on-and-off boyfriend and former co-star Taylor Kitsch in her upcoming memoir, Tell Me Everything.

The pair played love interests in the NBC teen drama, but their on-screen romance quickly turned into a “toxic” off-screen relationship that impacted their work, Kelly shared. Their on-again, off-again relationship taught her “not have on-set romances,” she recently told People. “But you have to learn it for yourself.” 

“All the effort I might have invested in connecting consistently with the girls on the show went to Taylor,” she wrote, per The Daily Beast. “So when my relationship with Taylor became toxic, I had no one to turn to.”

“Life became very difficult both on and off set whenever we broke up,” she continued. “We were young and had very few tools to handle our emotions and personal grievances.”

Kelly explained that it made working together very tense and impacted the rest of the cast and crew.

“On the days we had to work together and were broken up, he didn’t want to be in the hair and makeup trailer at the same time I was,” she wrote. “We couldn’t ride in the van together from base camp to set for the same reason. On those days, the tension on set was high and everyone felt the awkwardness.”

Kelly’s distance from the rest of the cast also meant that Kitsch received more support from their castmates during their breakups.

“I’d show up to work with a smile on my face thinking I was being professional, while everyone else felt sorry for the guy whose heart had just been broken,” she wrote. “My co-workers weren’t taking me out for drinks after work to mend my broken heart; they were taking him out.”

“My tough-guy approach only left me alone,” Kelly confessed. “If you behave as if you need no one, if no one around you knows any better, most certainly, no one will, in fact, be there.”

Kelly has since been linked to a number of A-list celebrities including Trevor Noah, Derek Jeter and Chris Evans, but Kitsch is reportedly her only ex-partner who was mentioned by name in the book.

Kelly’s heartfelt memoir details her tumultuous childhood being raised by a single mother and their estranged relationship. The Euphoria and Titans actress candidly talks about her past abusive relationships and working in an Albuquerque adult video store to support herself as a teenager.

It also chronicles her rise to fame as a television star and her journey to reconciling with her father, former Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay.

Kelly’s memoir Tell Me Everything will be released on May 2.