Riley Green has recently seen a huge surge in his country music career, but it seems he wants to expand his horizons beyond Music City. During a recent appearance on Katie & Company, host Katie Neal brought up a recent interview in which Scott Borchetta, the head of Green’s record label Big Machine Label Group, revealed that Green had an interest in acting.
Big Machine is also home to Tim McGraw, who has extensive experience on the big and small screens. Borchetta had shared that Green called him to ask how McGraw had first gotten into acting, and Neal wanted to find out what the 36-year-old has in mind.
“We’ve had some things that are kind of offered to us and some opportunities come up,” Green revealed, pointing to the recent popularity of “the Western lifestyle and country music.”
“I think it’s something I would enjoy,” he added of acting, sharing that he’s gotten to pick McGraw’s “brain a little bit.”
“He’s awesome,” Green gushed before explaining that while he used to think acting talent was something you had, or you didn’t, he’s come to learn that it’s a skill that can be developed with practice.
“As a kid especially, I thought acting was something you were just born with, or you weren’t. Like athletic ability or something. And when you look at it like something that you can learn, and you can get better at, I think I got a lot more interested in it when I started seeing it that way.”
“It’s got to be something that I think could help me in my music career as well, to get out in that space and try new things. And it keeps everything exciting when you can be a little nervous about something. People always ask, ‘Are you nervous to get on stage?’ and that’s such an easy thing to go do now because we’re so used to it. And I like to put myself in situations that are a little bit out of my comfort zone.”
Green specifically pointed to the way McGraw views acting as a helpful bit of advice for him. “I picture actors being like, ‘Oh yeah, well, if you didn’t do this in or go in the theater for this many years or whatever.” And Tim’s like, ‘Hey man, if I can do it, anybody can do it.’ Although that’s not true, there’s a great bit of motivation in that attitude when you’re talking to somebody like that.”
The Alabama native technically does have some acting experience, trying his hand at the craft in the music video for his hit duet with Ella Langley, “you look like you love me.” He also flexed the muscle in the video for current No. 1 single “Worst Way,” the video features Green and a love interest breaking household objects as they get steamy, and the singer shared that they only had a few takes for a few of the more destructive scenes.
“I know we broke a picture of a dog,” he recalled, “And we only had two of those. The glass was a certain kind of glass. And then we had to bust through some sheet rock on the wall. So I think we only had two setups of that. Anytime you pulled the thing off of the table and salad, lettuce goes everywhere, they had to pick all that back up and put it in the bowl and do it again, so you wanted to get it right the first time.”
