Warning: This article contains some spoilers for the show “Grotesquerie.”
Travis Kelce made his acting debut Wednesday night as a flirtatious hospital attendant in Ryan Murphy’s “Grotesquerie,” a role that saw him court the protagonist into a budding affair.
The specific character played by the Kansas City Chiefs tight end — who rose to mainstream fame over the past year amid an ongoing high-profile romance with music superstar Taylor Swift — had been kept secret until the third episode of the new FX series.
The 10-episode drama series follows small-town detective Lois Tryon, played by Niecy Nash-Betts, and reporter nun Sister Megan, played by Micaela Diamond, as the pair team up to try and get to the bottom of a string of heinous crimes. Aside from Kelce, the show also stars Courtney Vance, Lesley Manville, Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Raven Goodwin.
Following mounting fan anticipation, Kelce finally appears in the show as Ed Laclan, a hospital orderly who gradually flirts his way into a date with Lois. After an unsettling encounter with nurse Redd, played by Manville, a drunk Lois sits down for a cigarette break when Ed appears by her side to offer her a lighter.
As he and Lois strike up a playful conversation, Ed tells the detective, “You are oddly beautiful. Or beautifully odd. I can’t seem to figure it out but I sure want to.” He then tries to discourage her from driving while inebriated, to no avail. Lois gets back on the road only to end up crashing her car and waking up back in the hospital.
There, Ed appears yet again, this time bringing her a tray of food and mischievously wagging a finger at Lois while she’s being reprimanded in bed for driving while drunk. She soon convinces him to help her escape from the hospital premises, and Ed takes her hand as he leads her out the door to his convertible, where they drive off into the night.
In the fourth episode, Ed, who by now has nicknamed her “detective sassy pants,” catches Lois at the hospital again as she finishes up another visit to her dying husband. He asks her on a date — to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, before the pair further open up to each other over dinner.
“Listen, Lo,” Ed says as he takes her hand at the table. “I had to find stuff to live for. You? You haven’t lost your dignity. So don’t, alright?”
Despite promotional material teasing Kelce’s mysterious role ahead of the show’s premiere, the Chiefs player was nowhere to be found in the first two episodes, which released Sept. 25.
Still, Kelce brought up his acting debut last week in an episode of his podcast “New Heights,” which he co-hosts with his brother and fellow NFL star Jason Kelce. He noted that he hadn’t seen his own role ahead of the show’s premiere, and that he’s excited to watch because, “not going to lie, I focused on my parts more than I understood the entire grand scheme of the show.”
“I cannot wait to see everybody’s reaction [to] me being in a mystery thriller,” Kelce added, sportively dodging his brother’s prods for more specific details.
In a behind-the-scenes video released by FX last week, Kelce sits in hair and makeup as he shares how he gets into character: “I flip the switch like I would if I was going out on the football field and just getting into the zone.”
At the show’s New York City premiere Sept. 23, his mother, Donna Kelce, seemed to cast a shadow of doubt, albeit well-intentioned, on his acting skills, telling Variety on the purple carpet that her son “has no fear of failure.”
“You know, sometimes parents want to fix things for their kids,” she said. “But sometimes it’s better to just let them fail. You learn the most from things you don’t do well. Hopefully, if this is something he wants to do, he’ll get better at it.”
But Murphy has been eager to praise Kelce’s work on set.
“The thing about Travis is, I directed the first episode he did with Niecy, and Niecy and I just instantly loved him and took him by the hand and let him know that he would not, could not fail. And he really was amazing,” Murphy told reporters at a virtual press conference Monday, adding that Kelce had worked with an acting coach and regularly asked for guidance.
He said that he extended Kelce the role after the latter expressed an interest in trying out acting after football season, with the added offer that he would “specifically write it and tailor it for [Kelce].”
The football player had previously revealed in a May 15 episode of “New Heights” that he was “blown away” by Murphy’s decision to hand him such a big role in the show.
“Everybody’s just been so helpful in making me feel comfortable and, even on top of that, just giving me the direction I need and the coaching I need to portray this part that I’m in,” Kelce said in the podcast, adding, “I feel like an amateur and haven’t gotten fired yet, so we’re doing good.”
