Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis explains the nature of the character's kindness and positivity. Ted Lasso season 1 landed on Apple TV+ during the first year of the pandemic to quickly become a global hit. The comedy show's feel-good upbeat nature clearly resonated with audiences at a time when the world seem so bleak around them.
Sudeikis stars as the show's titular character Ted Lasso, an American football coach tasked with managing the fictional Barclay's Premier League soccer team AFC Richmond. Along with his longtime assistant coach and confidant Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), Lasso must face his critics, from both outside and within the clubhouse, and save the team from certain relegation. Along the way, Lasso joyfully inserts himself in the local soccer culture and instills a sense of hope amongst the team and its management starting with the recently divorced team owner Rebecca Welton, played by the Emmy award-winning actress Hannah Waddingham.
In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, Jason Sudeikis explained coach Ted Lasso's kindness and positivity. When asked if the show's co-creator and star purposefully set out to create a character that had positivity and selflessness at their core, Sudeikis responded that it was all done on purpose. Read the full quote below.
"To play the character [that way] was intentional. To play someone that was kindhearted, that didn't swear -- be like teflon toward people's negativity or sarcasm -- a hundred percent intentional."
In addition to its overall upbeat nature, the sports comedy also dealt with serious themes including the consequences of poor mental health when ignoring self to focus on others, increased anxiety from stress and external pressures, which could all lead to depression. Coach Lasso struggled with all of this during Ted Lasso season 2 as the weight of his failing marriage, the distance from his son, and the intense pressure of trying to dig AFC Richmond out of the Championship all came crashing down on him at the same time. Luckily for Lasso, Rebecca enlisted the help of Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), a local sports psychologist, who guided the coach back to his comfortable place of toothy grins and hopeful platitudes. Sudeikis responds to 60 Minutes' assertion that "kindness and positivity can be transformative" by saying, "And so can the opposite. But if you had to choose one -- at that point of writing it and wanting to play it -- I'd much rather view the world as Ted Lasso."
Even with Ted Lasso season 2 laying on a healthy heap of anxiety attacks and self-destruction, the show still manages to make the audience smile by the end of it, even if that smile is through gritted teeth. When the season came to a close, audiences were gifted with a superb cliffhanger revealing that kit manager turned assistant coach Nate (Nick Mohammed) has left Lasso's staff and AFC Richmond altogether to join Rebecca Welton's ex-husband's new team, West Ham United. The turn was foreshadowed throughout the course of the season's story arc but that did nothing to lessen the sting of Nate's betrayal. With season three currently in mid-production, possibly its final season of Ted Lasso according to co-creator Bill Lawrence, audiences are excited to see where Lasso's journey will end.
Source: 60 Minutes