After years of feeling like a phony in acting class, Connie Britton challenged herself to overcome it with one mantra.
Before every scene on "Friday Night Lights," which aired for five seasons from 2006 to 2011, she remembers telling herself, "Please don't have one inauthentic moment."
"My dedication was: I'm going to do this scene as honestly as I can. And that's a hard thing to do," Britton, 59, tells USA TODAY. "That was like a great challenge. But a worthwhile one."
Now, Britton's flipping the script by chasing the phony, starring in "Phony" (Tuesdays on Hulu, first two episodes streaming now) alongside Sam Nivola. The coming-of-age dramedy, which has hints of supernatural elements, explores the complicated dynamic between teenage boy Sonny
(Nivola) and his single mom Ellen (Britton) after he awakens from a car accident and suspects his mom has been replaced by a lookalike imposter.
"Something that attracted me to this show so much is I thought that this show demonstrates the metaphor of what happens between a parent and their teen child in those very specific years as teenagers, when the child is separating … branching off to adulthood," Britton explains. "That's their job, is to separate, but it feels devastating. The kids sort of turn their back, and as the parent, it's like, 'What are you doing? Why are you doing this?'"
Raising a teenager herself, Britton relates to the feeling. The actress says she and her 15-year-old son, Yoby, who she adopted from Ethiopia in November 2011 when he was nine months old, are "having our own version of that a little bit right now."
As a single mother learning how to take care of a baby while simultaneously starting on the hit show "Nashville," she didn't know what lay ahead when Yoby came into her life. Ahead, it seems, was her teenage son's "insane desire to listen to terrible hip-hop rap music on the way to school," she jokes.
This includes yelling at him to turn it down and hoping to one day understand the appeal. "Someday I'll get it and not just feel like the quintessential bummer," Britton quips. "I'm like, 'Turn that down! What are they saying? How can you listen to that? It's so awful!'"
How did they make Connie Britton look different in 'Phony'? Star says transformation was 'jarring'
The show has the audience taking a closer look at Britton than ever before while they inspect the ever-so-slight differences in Ellen and Ellen's supposed imposter. As Sonny slowly unravels his theory of the differences, the audience does the same.
The differences were so slight it becomes unsettling, even behind-the-scenes, says Britton.
"It's very, very jarring to see it," she explains. "I'm not thinking about what I look like, I'm thinking about like the character that I'm playing. And so it's more jarring for me to see it on screen."
For Nivola, seeing the changes first hand, it was easy to react to not only the physical differences, but Britton's "striking" performances that changed with each version of her. "It really made me feel something," he says.
Connie Britton and Sam Nivola 'White Lotus' history, shared feelings
Both Britton and Nivola starred on "The White Lotus" before "Phony," though they were on different seasons of the HBO hit. (Britton appeared on Season 1 while Nivola was in Season 3.) The actors say they joked about being from "the same club," but found more commonalities than just their previous roles. One of the topics they were able to bond over was battling imposter syndrome.
Nivola's character is a chronic people pleaser who may not have any real opinions of his own and wrestles with his own demons. In real life, Nivola can remember times from his own teenage years when he was battling similar feelings.
"I felt like a phony through all of high school," Nivola, 23, says. "I think everyone kind of does … You really don't find yourself until you're around my age. Right after college is when you fully solidify into who you are as a person. Your whole childhood is trying on different masks of different personalities and seeing which one fits you best."
Britton's been there too, but gently gives some poignant advice to her costar: People are "always going to be changing." Even as one of America's most beloved onscreen women, she constantly struggles with changes, expectations and staying present.
"Every decade, every five years, there's something that feels like, 'Oh, I thought I was this person, but actually I'm discovering that I'm this person,' in a cool way or in a scary way," Britton says. "We are putting an expectation on ourselves that I'm supposed to be this, so I'm gonna try to present myself as this."
"I think the greatest achievement that we can have in our lives is to just really commit to our own authenticity and whatever that is and embrace it and not be phony," she adds. "I would assume that's a struggle for most people throughout life."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Connie Britton's son making 'devastating' separation drew her to new show
