Ted Lasso fans think Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent is CGI. Jason Sudeikis’ coach Lasso may be the main character of Apple TV+’s comedy hit, but Goldstein’s irascible washed up soccer star Kent is arguably the character from the show who’s had the biggest pop culture impact.
Ted Lasso season 1 of course introduced the legendarily foul-mouthed Kent as a fading star on AFC Richmond's roster of misfits. By season’s end, he’d given up soccer due to knee injures and struck up a relationship with the team’s marketing guru Keeley Jones (Juno Temple). Season 2 saw Roy settling into a post-soccer life as a TV commentator and occasional overly-gruff youth coach. But soon Roy’s yearning to get back in the action saw him leaving the TV desk and joining the Richmond coaching staff. Kent’s arrival on the sidelines quickly led to the “Roy Kent Effect,” inspiring the team to go on a winning streak. Kent’s coaching prowess was indeed proven once and for all in a recent episode where he finally got through to his rival, the talented-but-difficult young star Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), using some very interesting psychology and hand signals.
But amid this dawning Roy Kent hype something else somewhat darker and stranger has emerged. In certain corners of the internet, there is a growing belief that Goldstein’s character it actually CGI. It all started on Reddit’s R/TedLasso subreddit (via GamesRadar), as users discussed Kent’s allegedly strange and unnatural qualities. Indeed, an initial thread in the discussion was posted 11 months ago by user cutterman1234 who commented at the time “I just started watching the pilot, and i’m up to the scene where roy is called into teds office. Am i crazy or does he look like a complete cgi character?” Redditors then began chiming in with their responses to the new theory. See a sampling of the best comments in the space below:
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Much of Reddit’s speculation on what might be going on with Roy Kent has focused on the character’s resemblance to real life Irish player and manager Roy Keane. Certainly Kent’s backstory was inspired in part by Keane, but some Roy Kent truthers think the character has literally been altered to look more like Keane, leading to some uncanny valley effects. There's also the matter of Goldstein's performance, which is certainly idiosyncratic, both in terms of physical movement and vocal delivery. In some ways Kent's movements are halting and robotic, but obviously that doesn't literally make him a fake human, it makes him an actor whose choices are off-beat and interesting (and clearly effective).
As for the question of why anyone would try something like creating an entire CGI character for a TV show and then lying about it, there's of course a theory about this too. The aforementioned cutterman1234 (who is still posting about this after 11 months) suggested Apple is pulling a fast one with the character, speculating in another thread, “I bet its one of apples conditions for making the show- they get to try out their 'new cgi tech' and at the emmys theyre gonna put him up for best actor and make some surprise announcement 'he was cgi.'"
It would indeed be a shocking twist if Goldstein’s name were announced at the Emmys as Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy and it was revealed that he doesn’t actually exist and Roy Kent is CGI. Of course, the problem is that Goldstein does exist and is both an actor and writer on the show. But these facts probably won’t get in the way of certain Ted Lasso fans continuing to run with their insane theory that one of the show’s main characters is secretly computer generated.
Source: cutterman1234/Reddit (via GamesRadar)