In his scripted television debut in 2020, Travis Kelce, playing a hot-headed athlete-turned-astronaut, fell into a desert sinkhole and died. His career in Hollywood, however, is alive, well and seemingly with more prospects than ever for the Kansas City Chiefs tight end who appears to be exploring the career he wants to build beyond the goalposts.
Thursday marks Kelce’s return to the field for his 12th season in the NFL as the league’s highest paid tight end. But he’s doing so with more eyes on him than ever, which is saying a lot for a three-time Super Bowl champ.
He’s entering this season having just landed roles in the Ryan Murphy-produced FX show “Grotesquerie” and Adam Sandler’s hotly-anticipated “Happy Gilmore” sequel. In September, he will debut as the host of Prime Video’s upcoming game show “Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?” He also just inked a deal upwards of $100 million to bring his popular sports podcast “New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce,” now in its third season, to Amazon’s Wondery.
“We positioned Travis to be world famous,” André Eanes, who with his brother Aaron Eanes manages Kelce, told the New York Times in an April interview. “We didn’t know how it would happen, or when it would happen, or what would help push that further along. But it’s always been the thought in the back of our minds.”
Kelce is far from the first to attempt to go from touchdowns to Tinseltown. Former NFL-ers Terry Crews and Michael Strahan and college football players Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Carl Weathers and Mark Harmon are among those who did it successfully. What he has made clear – both through the projects he chooses to pursue and his just-happy-to-be-here approach to being Taylor Swift’s boyfriend – is that Kelce is charting a path for himself in Hollywood in his own way and writing a new playbook for tackling showbiz.
At the time he booked “Moonbase 8,” Kelce wasn’t a household name and had little acting experience. His only Hollywood job up until that point was starring in the 2016 E! dating reality show “Catching Kelce.” (Spoiler alert: It didn’t work out.)
John C. Reilly, who co-created the space comedy alongside Fred Armisen, Tim Heidecker and “Portlandia” executive producer Jonathan Krisel, told The Ringer in 2020 that they booked Kelce for the job after former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski passed on the role.
“When Gronkowski said no we were like, ‘We’re gonna make Gronkowski regret this! We’re gonna get the kid who’s nipping at his heels!’” Reilly joked. “And guess what, our little Travis Kelce went right ahead of Mr. Gronkowski and won the Super Bowl.”
Kelce played a satire of himself, coming off as a bossy and entitled football star who was commissioned by NASA as a PR ploy to join three aspiring astronauts (Reilly, Heidecker and Armisen) who were attempting to qualify for their first lunar mission at a moon base simulator in Winslow, Arizona. He only appeared in one episode.
“I think like anyone dipping into new territory, Travis required a bit of warming up to the whole acting thing but after a few takes he felt very natural and funny,” Heidecker told CNN via email, recalling his time on the set with Kelce. “I don’t think I was begging him to quit his day job but he was extremely dedicated, open minded and a real pleasure to work with, so it’s no surprise to me he’d find success in whatever field he’s interested in!”
Heidecker, also a musician who has a new album coming out next month, added: “It’s been cool to see him break out in such a wholesome and admirable way.”
After “Moonbase 8,” Kelce appeared to toggle between winning Super Bowl rings and making buzzy appearances on “Saturday Night Live.”
Just one month after the Chiefs won the big game in 2023, Kelce made his “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut. The next time Kelce appeared on “SNL” was in an October 2023 cameo alongside Swift and then in February 2024, he scored his third Super Bowl ring when the Chiefs beat the San Fransisco 49ers in a nail-biter rout.
Overall, the reception to his “SNL” appearances were so positive that it sparked buzz about his Hollywood pursuits, something he was asked about during a Super Bowl press conference in February.
“I’m comedy all the way… I just like to have a fun time and make people laugh,” Kelce said at the time, speaking about which genre he’s most interested in pursuing. “I’ll dabble in everything though just to see if I have fun doing it and I know there’s definitely Hollywood talks out there.”
Perhaps dabbling across all genres is a good strategy but he may also consider take cues from other athletes-turned-actors like “The Rock,” who previously spoke about one of the most important parts of his transition from college football player to professional wrestler to Hollywood star.
“I was done trying to be someone I’m not to conform to Hollywood,” Johnson wrote on his Instagram page in 2020. “Instead, I decided to be my own man and Hollywood would eventually conform to me.
In recent months, Kelce has become attached to several upcoming projects, marking what appeared to be a busy off-season.
In April, Prime Video announced that Kelce had been selected to host the streamer’s upcoming game show “Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?” And then in May, Kelce landed a role on Ryan Murphy’s horror drama “Grotesquerie,” acting alongside Niecy Nash, Courtney B. Vance and Lesley Manville.
Kelce had admitted that he had some some nerves about the gig.
“I feel like an amateur right now, but it’s definitely a fun challenge, and I’m enjoying every bit of it,” he said in an interview with “Good Morning America” in June. “I’m coachable. That’s one thing I know from being in sports, I am a coachable guy.”
Kelce is also set to make a cameo in the upcoming “Happy Gilmore 2” movie, according to Adam Sandler, who is returning to star in and co-write the long-awaited sequel to the 1996 golf comedy.
During a recent episode of Kelce’s “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce” podcast, Sandler teased the scene Kelce is in, saying, “We’re gonna have fun because the scene you’re doing is with so many great golfers. It’s going to be amazing, you’re going to be funny as hell.”
The sequel will stream on Netflix.
Earlier this year, Kelce also became a first-time executive producer when he invested in the indie movie “My Dead Friend Zoe,” a dark comedy starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman. The movie premiered at SXSW and won the SXSW Film Festival’s Audience Award.
Then there’s the podcast, the one that started as two NFL stars and brothers casually talking sports. Now, it’s a chart-topping production that has the brothers signing nine-figure deals that eclipse the ones that they signed to stay on the field.
Kelce co-hosts “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce” with his brother Jason, who retired this year from the Philadelphia Eagles after 13 years in the NFL.
If he wanted to, Kelce could arguably just keep on chatting with his brother on “New Heights” in his NFL afterlife, but history shows that Kelce isn’t one to be happy on the sidelines, particularly when the Hollywood game is calling his name.
For now, at least, Kelce maintains that he’s happiest just being the “guy on the chiefs.”
“I just love football and how it takes me away from life and gives me something I can feel genuinely happy about,” Kelce said on Tuesday during a Chiefs pre-season press conference. “I have so much excitement doing it, it’s going to be hard trying to figure out when to call it quits or not.”
