‘Ted Lasso’ returns: ‘We’re stunned by the reaction the show gets and how much it has come to mean to people’

No one really knows what it is about Ted Lasso that makes it so endearing. The truth is even Ted Lasso himself doesn’t know. When asked, his creator, star, writer and producer Jason Sudeikis puts a hand to his chin, tilts his head and lets out a long “hmmmm...”. Could it be that a fictional tale about a good-natured coach from the American heartland, who arrives in London from Kansas City hating tea and becomes a beloved figure across the U.K. with his lessons on teamwork, simply brings out the best in us because we see good people in him and those around him? And that such people, imperfect as they may be, are not easy to find, either in fiction or in real life? That “hmmmm” of doubt turns into one of recognition.

Maybe nobody knows exactly what ingredients made Ted Lasso the most-watched show on Apple TV. But its success is so indisputable that, despite seeming finished (its third season, announced as the last, ended in the spring of 2023), it has returned. And it has done so precisely in a summer dominated by global soccer, in which the Spanish men’s team won the World Cup —in fact, the characters congratulate the journalist, a Spaniard, on the victory— and with the women’s World Cup just a year away. And that is precisely Coach Lasso’s task: to return to Richmond to coach an emerging women’s team with little budget, order or cohesion. Like Sudeikis, he returns to the homes of millions with a sense of humor as wholesome as it is caustic.

So was there ever a click, a single moment when the return was decided? “The click was when Warner and Apple TV said yes, but there really wasn’t a specific moment. It was a slow process,” Sudeikis recalls. At a Los Angeles hotel, wearing a knit jacket with the initials of Kansas City —Lasso’s city— without his trademark mustache and accompanied by his two colleagues and co-coaches —Brendan Hunt, who plays Beard and is also a co-creator of the show; and newcomer coach Alice Chilton, played by actress Tanya Reynolds— he admits that when the project was greenlit, before the Covid pandemic, they were surprised, as they were by the public’s reaction and how “people were really mad and they wanted us to come back; if only we knew why...,” Hunt laughs. “We’re stunned by the reaction the show gets and how much it has come to mean to people. We never expected that. So yes, we kept going,” the assistant coach explains.

For Sudeikis one of the keys to the plots and characters is “that they feel like real people,” but not by seeking a documentary tone —far from it. For example, he speaks of the brilliant Nora Ephron and how she “didn’t write about love; she wrote about love in movies.” Thus, the series “is not a documentary, although we deal with aspects of real life; be it divorces, soccer, winning and losing, harassment... We try to be as honest as possible, but we seize the chance to choose the outcome. We aim to keep the show surprising and funny, and we always think of the viewer first. That’s why it’s fun to watch the characters try... and with good music too,” he laughs. He’s not wrong: the series’ main theme, by Marcus Mumford, is very recognizable, and the show features tracks by the Rolling Stones, Oasis, Ed Sheeran, David Bowie, The Cranberries and Vampire Weekend.

In this new season, the male squad —Dani Rojas, Jamie Tartt and Sam Obisanya— steps off the pitch and out of the cast as two dozen women join Richmond, along with their leader, the hilarious and abrasive coach Chilton. The actress says the welcome has been warm, although she felt “very nervous” when she arrived. “t’s really a scary thing to come into a show as the new kid when it’s so well loved and these guys have been playing these characters for so many years,” she admits. “Just thinking about it makes me nervous.” “On my first day I was literally shaking, but everyone was so kind and supportive that I felt safe. It’s like the show is a warm blanket, and everyone was lovely,” Reynolds, known for series such as Sex Education, explains.

The actress had only seen Sudeikis via video call and had not met other cast members such as Juno Temple (Keeney) or Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca Welton, the club owner) nor the writers, so what could be more British than organizing “a little pub outing together before we started shooting” to break the ice, she reveals. “We were friends hanging out, and then we embarked on that weird six-month journey together to make a TV series.”

Sudeikis says the atmosphere reminded him of when he joined Saturday Night Live in 2013. “I didn’t know if it was for three weeks or 10 years, as I got to stay. I thought they’d fire me, and I remember the people who were kind to me. That was the energy I wanted to bring here, without turning it into a cult or anything,” he says, as his colleagues laugh. “We were there to serve a purpose bigger than ourselves, and that’s the team spirit.”

In this soccer-flavored summer from an American perspective, Lasso is back again to explain penalty kicks, that a draw can still be valid or what offside is and, ultimately, to give Americans a certain education about soccer. But that was never the goal. “That’s just been a happy byproduct of people responding to the show and the characters and the stories and the tone. We love the sport here, even if we embraced it late. And sometimes showing teaches more than telling,” Sudeikis says. He adds that his colleague Brendan Hunt has proven to be a great supporter of the game. More and more people in the U.S. identify it with the word football and not just soccer. Has he dared to say it that way too? “It’s like swearing in front of your parents,” he laughs, “but I’ll say soccer. But football is more my natural default.”

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