Whichever it was, that was the first time a person stopped him to say how much he liked the show.
Through a program of dogged positivity and folksy aphorisms — “When it comes to locker rooms, I like ’em just like my mother’s bathing suits: I only wanna see ’em in one piece” — the soccer neophyte turns a ragtag bunch of jaded pros into, if not exactly winners, a cohesive family of self-believers.
But when he arrived in series form on Apple TV+ in August 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, a bitterly divisive presidential election and a summer of police violence and racial justice protests, the deeply decent, endlessly upbeat Ted Lasso was like a cultural balm.
foresaw the chaos and terror of the summer of 2020 and wanted to prove that America could do something right,” the Times TV critic Mike Hale wrote in his review.
On Tuesday, it received 20 Emmy nominations, the most of any comedy series this year, including nods for best comedy and for best actor in a comedy .
In a group video call earlier this month, Sudeikis, Hunt and another creator, the sitcom veteran Bill Lawrence , discussed this and other topics, including how long they think “Ted Lasso” will last and the “Batman-villain” public figure who gave the series added relevance.
JASON SUDEIKIS In London we were in lockdown.
And it was just fun to play, and a fun double act for Brendan and I as Ted and his assistant coach, which we then very cleverly named Coach Beard.
So Brendan, Joe and I thought if we were to do a third thing, Is it a commercial? Is it a movie? We kept spilling out stories — we used the British “Office” as a model and came up with a pilot outline and ideas for episodes for the first season, second season.
SUDEIKIS The theme and tone of it was just something that was bouncing around in my head.
And also the idea of just saying please and thank you — I remember holding doors for people when I first got hired at “Saturday Night Live,” and they would stop, thinking I’m going to hit them in the butt or something.
SUDEIKIS We had to work backward, because if you’re going to play this nice guy at a certain age who’s married, then why does he take this job? Well, things must not be great at home.
There’s more to Ted than meets the eye, and that also applies to the other characters.
LAWRENCE It would be easy to go, “This female lead is just the classic villain, she’s trying to destroy the team, she’s a shrew.” But we’re going to show what got her there, how she was emotionally abused.
And through the good graces and the deep pockets of Apple, who evidently do more than television, we’ll be able to tell that story to its conclusion.
LAWRENCE Even though I joke about it, this particular journey of Ted Lasso and the people around him will be done after the third season.
LAWRENCE This is a response to the toxic and cynical culture out there, especially social media, the political discourse, how people speak to each other.
LAWRENCE It was curious that “Ted Lasso” was labeled, like, “It’s a sunshine enema through your television set!” It’s about a dude whose wife isn’t into him, who’s suffering from massive panic attacks.
SUDEIKIS One of the themes is that evil exists — bullies, toxic masculinity, malignant narcissists — and we can’t just destroy them.
We made the first season in a bubble, and we wrote the stories for the second season in the same bubble before the show had come out.
HUNT It’s really cool that the show is found to be inspirational, but our only intention was to make a comedy.