Minka Kelly Says 'Toxic' Romance with Taylor Kitsch Disrupted Friday Night Lights

The "TItans" star admits that she and Taylor went against director Peter Berg's advice to not get into a relationship and instead "shacked up" almost immediately.

As a result, she said that relationship wound up not just affecting her relationship with Kitch, but with the rest of the cast, too.

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

As Taylor was more comfortable "sharing his feelings" with the cast, Minka felt very alone when they would break up -- which she said happened "more times than [she could] count."

"My coworkers weren’t taking me out for drinks after work to mend my broken heart; they were taking him out," she said. And during those off times, everyone suffered at work.

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

Minka was 26 and Taylor 25 years old during Season 1 of "Friday Night Lights." They would star together for the first three seasons, after which Minka left the show. Kitsch departed as a series regular after the following season.

"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 claims. "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."

Nevertheless, Minka wrote that she learned a lot about herself from the relationship and how they handled things. "Vulnerability begets connection," she said, referring to Taylor being more, "as evidenced by the outcome of both our coping mechanisms."

"My tough-guy approach only left me alone," she continued. "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."

The former couple had kept their romance a secret during during the show and even for years afterward. It wasn't until 2018 that Kitsch admitted that they had dated to Andy Cohen, but he didn't offer any additional details other than to say "the stakes were crazy" and "we both were so raw."