Travis Kelce is having a huge year in 2024. The NFL player won the Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs in February, and he’s in the new FX horror series Grotesquerie.
Though he starred in the 2016 E! reality TV dating show Catching Kelce and hosted Saturday Night Live in 2023, this is his first significant acting role.
Details on what character Kelce plays in the show are still under wraps — in fact, his castmates said they’re not even sure what’s going to happen — but he teased on his podcast, New Heights, that it’s a significant part.
Grotesquerie, which premiered Sept. 25, follows Detective Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash-Betts) as she investigates a gruesome series of murders amid growing struggles with her family and addiction.
Nash-Betts told Yahoo Entertainment that on set, Kelce took directions well — and was “charming, well-prepared [and] a professional.” She even offered him guidance.
“In the huddle, when they’re like, ‘Get in there, guys’ — I don’t know what they say in football, but in this, I was the coach,” Nash said. “I’m like, ‘Listen, you got this, trust your gift, get out there.’”
Raven Goodwin, who plays Tryon’s daughter, told Yahoo Entertainment she worked “very closely” with Kelce.
“He showed up to work!” she said. “We welcomed him with open arms, and he was gracious and amazing. He did his thing.”
“We couldn’t go on the football field and … do the reverse,” Courtney B. Vance, who plays Tryon’s husband, told Yahoo Entertainment. “I was just in awe of what he was doing.”
Star player in ‘Grotesquerie’
The cast members all had the same reason for signing onto the project: They wanted to work with creator Ryan Murphy, who’s known for shows like Glee and 9-1-1.
Goodwin said she’s a huge fan of his work on American Horror Story.
“When I got Grotesquerie — which was labeled Snow Globe [at the time], I was intrigued,” she said. “I was like five months pregnant, but I [said], ‘I’m doing it, I don’t care!’”
When Vance got the call from Murphy about his part, it wasn’t fully formed yet, but he trusted him — even though he knew many of his scenes just showed him lying in bed.
“It was intriguing to me to be in a coma for a couple of episodes,” he said. “Last time [Murphy and I] did something together, I got an Emmy, so I’m good. … I had to let my reps know it ain’t on the page yet, but let’s ink it.”
Nash-Betts also won an Emmy for her role on one of Murphy’s productions, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. She called him “a genius.”
“I love him so much,” she said. “I’m always wondering what’s going on in his mind, like, ‘How did you come up with this? How do you think of this kind of thing?’”
Nash-Betts knows she has played a lot of law enforcement roles over the course of her career, from Reno 911 to Scream Queens, but she’s “never played a character like this.”
“This detective is hunting a serial killer. The serial killer is taunting her. She’s battling her own addictions … and troubled family life,” Nash-Betts said of the role, which she also developed alongside Murphy. “She was just so many things.”
Nash-Betts, who is also one of the show’s executive producers, is embracing her starring role, Emmy success and work as a “coach” to actors like Kelce. It’s been a long time coming.
“You eat the elephant one bite at a time. There’s always something to strive for. The goal post … keeps moving,” she said. “And to be honest, I love it here.”
The rookies
Micaela Diamond and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who play a nun and a priest in Grotesquerie, also said Murphy was the reason they signed on to the series.
Diamond, who is best known for her performances in Broadway productions of The Cher Show and Parade, said she was also drawn to the horror genre.
“There’s such an array of choices that you can justify because it’s heightened and campy,” she said. “And I think nuns are kind of inaccessible, so as an audience, or as an actor, your fantasies about them can run wild.”
Diamond and Murphy talked about how the character was inspired by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Manson family cult who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975.
Chavez said Murphy tapped him for the Grotesquerie role while he was starring in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
“For me, it provided an opportunity to bring my own inventiveness and my own creativity to a role because I wasn’t playing a real person,” he said. “I got the chance to exercise a different pocket of my artistry in this other project.”
For a while, he was doing “double duty” shooting both shows.
“[He’s] fully a priest one day, and the next day, Lyle Menendez,” Diamond joked.
Grotesquerie airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX and streams the following day on Hulu.
