American hopes to charm Brits in new soccer series ‘Ted Lasso’ on Apple TV+
Jason Sudeikis was a huge sports fan growing up in Kansas, especially basketball. Not so much that game where you kick a ball into a goal.
“The beautiful game? I didn’t get it a couple of years ago. I thought, ‘Well, good for them for getting that nickname.’ But now I get it,” he says. “While I have a very shallow understanding of soccer, I have a deep appreciation for it.”
Sudeikis artfully mines his ignorance of the sport in the new Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso,” in which he plays an American football coach who takes charge of an elite British soccer team despite having little knowledge of the game they also call football.
“You could fill two internets with what I don’t know about football,” Lasso admits to shocked English journalists when he’s unveiled as the new coach of fictional West London club AFC Richmond.
Sudeikis’ Lasso may be a fish out of water, but he’s relentlessly optimistic and kind, armed with homespun wisdom in the face of hostility. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” is the only printable chant lobbed his way.
Sudeikis and executive producer Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs” and “Spin City”) fleshed out a three-dimensional Lasso from the character first created for NBC Sports to sell Americans on coverage of English Premier League soccer.
“One of the reasons that Jason and I connected on this is we both felt — this was pre-pandemic — that, ‘Man, it was such a cynical world out there that we could use a really optimistic and hopeful show.’”
While the NBC version of Lasso was a bit of a buffoon, the new series adds depth, with the hero estranged from his wife and people constantly underestimating him. He and his right hand man, played by Brendan Hunt, try to help the players realize their potential and sort out their romantic lives.