Connie Britton ‘Loves’ Friday Night Lights’ Eric and Tami Taylor Being Compared to Tim Walz and Wife Gwen

Connie Britton is all about the Friday Night Lights love she is seeing this presidential-election cycle.

The actress recently chatted with PEOPLE about her new movie Here After, as well as about the parallels she has heard between vice-presidential hopeful Tim Walz and wife Gwen Walz compared to her and Kyle Chandler’s Friday Night Lights characters, Eric and Tami Taylor.

“I’m so into it. I love it so much,” says Britton, 57, who has been vocal about her support for the Kamala Harris-led ticket and even attended a White Women for Kamala Zoom call in July, days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and Vice President Harris, 59, was presumed the new Democratic nominee. (The latter was solidified at August’s Democratic National Convention.)

Minnesota Gov. Walz, 60, was announced as her running mate on Aug. 6. And since the country has gotten more acquainted with his history, many people have commented on how his relationship with wife Gwen, 58, seems to mirror that of the fictional Taylors.

“I love Tami Taylor and Coach Taylor because they are real people,” Britton explains. “Tami and Coach share my values. And when I look at Coach Walz and Gwen Walz, I feel like they’re real people and they share my values, and I think he is a really extraordinary human being.”

The actress goes on to note that the governor has “accomplished so much in his life,” saying that she has “the highest regard for anyone who’s ever a teacher.”

“And so when I found out he was a coach, I was like, of course,” Britton continues. “And because, as we did learn watching Friday Night Lights, that role can be not only of the leader of a team, but a very important and respected member of a community.”

“I feel that there’s a real authenticity to Coach Walz and to Gwen and to their family that I just, I admire and have been yearning for and certainly in our, when I’m looking at our politics of late,” she adds. “And so I love the comparison. I think it’s dead on.”

As for Friday Night Lights — which was adapted from the 1990 book and 2004 film of the same name, and ran for five seasons on NBC from 2006 to 2011 — Britton previously said she didn’t think there would be a reboot.

“We’ll do a reunion for sure, like a cast reunion, [but] I don’t see them going back into that story, at least with this cast,” she told Entertainment Tonight in July 2021.

The actress did reveal at the time that she’d “heard inklings a few years ago that they were gonna make another Friday Night Lights.”

“Now meanwhile, we know we’ve already had a movie, we already had this TV show, and then if they were to do it again with like, a whole different iteration of it, I don’t know,” Britton added. “I would think that would be sort of odd.”

Here After is in select theaters and on digital now.