Is Travis Kelce entering his Hollywood actor era?

The Kansas City Chiefs tight end is set to play a role in Ryan Murphy's upcoming FX horror series Grotesquerie, Deadline exclusively reported.

The entertainment site's sources said that the NFL star has been cast in the series opposite Niecy Nash-Betts, Courtney B. Vance and Lesley Manville. The series has just begun production.

FX, Murphy and 20th Century Television have refused to comment.

Travis Kelce: now a Hollywood actor

Kelce thumbs up

Murphy's projects don't really release details this early in the production, so for now all we know is the cast includes Nash-Betts, Vance and Manville… and now Kelce, and that the series is set to premiere in the fall.

This premiere coincides with the upcoming football season, with the tight end returning to the Chiefs as Super Bowl winners — for the third time in five years.

Grotesquerie is Kelce's first foray into acting after his stint as a first-time host of Saturday Night Live in March 2023. Pop superstar Taylor swift also made a cameo with him on the NBC late-night sketch comedy show last fall.

The NFL's highest-paid tight end is gaining worldwide recognition for his high-profile relationship with Swift, and is thus in high demand. He has spoken openly about his ambitions of breaking into Hollywood. To this end, he has signed with CAA last year.

Ryan Murphy: crossover master

The NFL star's previous TV experience is in his own 2016 unscripted reality dating series Catching Kelce, which ran for one season. He also just signed on to host Prime Video's upcoming game show Are you Smarter Than a Celebrity?

He co-hosts the podcast New Heights with his brother recently retired former Philadelphia Eagles center, Jason Kelce. Travis Kelce also became a first-time executive producer for the indie movie My Dead Friend Zoe, which made its premiere at SXSW. He's also going to produce a documentary on the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, King Pleasure, which is also the title of the artist's exhibition last year.

Murphy has helped one other celebrity in crossing over to acting. In 2015, he cast Lady Gaga in her first major role on American Horror Story: Hotel, the fifth installment in the series. She then went on to star in the remake of A Star is Born, released in 2018, and earned an Academy Award nomination for best actress. The movie also won her her first Oscar for best original song.

Coincidentally, Gaga hosted SNL before getting an acting role from Murphy.

Murphy is making Grotesquerie with his frequent collaborators Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken. He released an all-text teaser in February on Instagram. This post also included Nash-Betts in character on audio 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.”

It would be interesting to see what role Kelce would play in a horror series. While the word grotesquerie is defined as the quality or state of being grotesque, it is also an art or literature style characterized by strange, distorted or exaggerated depiction of human or animal forms. This style also includes humor, satire and social commentary.