Patrick Mahomes is keeping friend and teammate Travis Kelce humble as the Kansas City Chiefs tight end attempts to break into the acting world.
During an interview with the NFL that aired on Netflix Wednesday, December 25, Mahomes, 29, was asked what he would give Kelce, 35, for Christmas. “The guy has got everything,” Mahomes noted before quipping, “Maybe some acting lessons.”
Mahomes made the joke on the same day as the Happy Gilmore 2 teaser was released, in which Kelce makes a cameo. Kelce’s star has been on the rise since he joined the Kansas City Chiefs.
After his high-profile romance with Taylor Swift made headlines in September 2023, however, Kelce’s success has skyrocketed even more and with that has come new opportunities. Kelce made his acting debut earlier this year in Ryan Murphy‘s FX series Grotesquerie and later hosted Prime Video’s game show Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?
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Kelce’s Grotesquerie costars had nothing but praise after working with him. Micaela Diamond recalled the athlete coming in and being “so game” to work on the show, exclusively telling Us Weekly in September, “We all were just like, ‘Let’s make a TV show.’ That’s something Niecy [Nash-Betts] said all the time. There’s part of this that’s just play. We’re just playing and [Travis] can do that.”
Diamond, 25, called Kelce a committed “team player” on set. “This was my first big TV show and also his,” she added. “So we were in it together trying to soak up as much as we could and be inspired by the veteran actors around us and listen and respond.”
After his role was revealed, Nash-Betts, 54, shared how she made an effort to make sure Kelce felt supported on set.
“I just wanted to make sure I was very, very present for him in this new space. [He was] coming into the acting world and was just getting baptized in [the acting world] real quick,” she told Us in October. “[Grotesquerie] is going to come with some things that maybe other shows don’t present so I just wanted to make sure he felt covered. I wanted to make sure we had time to rehearse.”
She continued: “The blessing about this particular show for an actor is that most of the characters play a duality. Travis went from being a charming person who worked at the hospital to being down and out on his luck guy who has a mullet.”
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Kelce, for his part, previously admitted there was pressure that came with the gig.
“Right now, I’m just taking it scene by scene and trying to make sure that I remember my lines. Like I said, I’m very amaetur at this,” the Kansas City Chiefs tight end said on his and brother Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast in May. “Hopefully I don’t bomb this for [Ryan]. It sounds like everything is going as planned, and I can’t thank him enough for just this opportunity because I’m sure there’s actors out there who have been in the acting world that would die for an opportunity to work with Ryan, and I’m getting it in, really, my first gig ever. So it’s pretty unique and pretty cool.”
He concluded: “The biggest difference from being outside of the acting world and starting to get into it, is you’re very much in tune with scenes. You don’t want to get so caught up with the lines, you want to be in the scene with whoever you’re acting with, right? I started off thinking, ‘Man, just memorize your lines. Memorize your lines.’ But in reality, you want to be able to take that scene from one point to the next and portray exactly what the scene’s meaning is.”
