Long before he began dating Taylor Swift, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce had his sights set on Hollywood. There was no phone number-adorned friendship bracelet in sight when he headlined the 2016 E! reality dating series Catching Kelce or signed with CAA in an effort to get his “face out from under the helmet,” as he told Vanity Fair last June. Now, in the midst of his high-profile relationship, Kelce has further entered his show-biz era by booking his first major onscreen acting role.
Kelce has been cast in Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming TV series Grotesquerie, according to Deadline. He’ll star in an undisclosed role alongside Niecy Nash-Betts, Courtney B. Vance, and Lesley Manville in the show, which reportedly just began production and is slated for a fall debut.
The NFL star confirmed his news in an Instagram Story featuring a video of himself and Nash-Betts. “Guys, guess who I am working with in Grotesquerie?” she asks in the video before panning over to Kelce. “Stepping into new territory with Niecy,” Kelce adds. Murphy, who offered similar big acting breaks to the likes of Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian on seasons of American Horror Story, teased Grotesquerie back in February, with a video in which Nash-Betts can be heard saying, “I don’t know when it started, I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s different now. There’s been a shift, like something’s opening up in the world — a kind of hole that descends into a nothingness.”
The 34-year-old Kelce enters his next season with the Kansas City Chiefs coming off the team’s third Super Bowl win in five years. He was also recently made the highest-paid tight end in the league with a contract extension worth an estimated $34.25 million that runs through 2027.
But off the field, Kelce has been engineering a post-football career. In addition to co-hosting the successful New Heights podcast with his brother and former NFL center Jason Kelce, Travis also hosted Saturday Night Live in March 2023, and returned to the sketch comedy series for a cameo alongside Swift last fall. Kelce also recently signed on as host of Amazon’s Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? game show and serves as an executive producer on two upcoming films—indie drama My Dead Friend Zoe, which premiered at SXSW, and a documentary on artist Jean-Michel Basquiat titled King Pleasure.
Eric Stonestreet, a star of Modern Family and Kansas City Chiefs fan, previously told VF that Kelce “will have the ability to do much more than just commentate on football” should he choose. “Can he be an actor? One hundred percent. Good performance starts with what Travis possesses naturally, which is an open heart.”
