Team ‘Ted Lasso’ On Why A Mix Of Comedy And Tragedy Makes For Great TV

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: For years I sat right by a U.K. national newspaper sports desk. Few things excited me more than when, if I happened to be in the office of an evening, a rare thing, and there was a big soccer game showing on the giant screens located where the sports writers lived, then I’d dive right in and watch.Understand that I’m not a soccer nutcase but I appreciate a lively match whether it be World Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Cup, Champions League — frankly, whatever.The energy in the room for a World Cup match, in particular, was often electrifying.There was very little football on during the pandemic and there were few sports guys (and gals) in the newsroom, which is why Ted Lasso, starring Jason Sudeikis as the eponymous fish-out-of-water American coach hired by new club owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) to train AFC Richmond, was such a tonic when it arrived on Apple TV+ in August 2020. “Football is life,” emerged as one of the show’s key catch-phrases, though the show’s success for me, had more to do with life around the game of football.Two seasons on, Ted Lasso has become a bona fide success.

The cast is shooting the third season, in all likelihood the final one. Sudeikis has made the point several times before that Ted Lasso has a three-season arc.But, as we were at the same event for Emmy members, I asked for clarification: “Life is long.

Who knows,” said Sudeikis, shrugging his shoulders. “We’re just trying to tell the story we’re trying to tell here and land the plane as gently as it took off,” Sudeikis told Deadline at a reception hosted by Apple TV+ in London at the May Fair Hotel.Others in attendance included Nick Mohammed who plays Nathan Shelley, who by season’s end had become, in my mind anyhow,