Brendan Hunt explains the future of ‘Ted Lasso’
Brendan Hunt shares how “Ted Lasso” came back and why the Richmond women’s team became the focus of the next chapter.
In the throes of a global pandemic, Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso” premiered, buoying viewers by leaning into virtues not often center stage in productions – sentiments like hope, forgiveness, honesty and the bold choice to believe that one’s circumstances can change. But after three seasons and 34 episodes, the soccer dramedy left the field.
In the Season 3 finale May 31, 2023, Coach Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) packed his visor and whistle and headed back to Kansas City to be with his son Henry after transforming the AFC Richmond team, owned by Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham). Lasso’s companion for Biscuits with the Boss sold a portion of the team to the public and heard a pitch from her best friend, PR extraordinaire Keeley Jones (Juno Temple), about a women’s team.
“I certainly thought it could well be done,” Brendan Hunt, series cocreator who also plays offbeat Coach Beard on the show, tells USA TODAY. “Because by the time we finished Season 3, we were very tired. And if I was tired, then I knew Jason had to be even more so because the show takes even more [of] a toll on him than it does the rest of us.”
Sudeikis, Hunt and Brett Goldstein, who plays gruffy AFC coach Roy Kent, are what sports fans might call utility players, pulling triple duty as writers, producers and stars.
“Jason’s also got a lot of emotional places he’s got to go to on camera for this as well,” says Hunt, 54. “So just the trappings of the structure of what it is and what our jobs are inherently just takes a lot out of you.”
But if Lasso has taught us anything, it’s the power of hope. In February 2024, writers assembled at the Ojai Valley Inn, a stunning Spanish Colonial-style resort 82 miles northwest of Los Angeles that once counted Clark Gable and Judy Garland among its high-profile guests.
“I was glad that we were doing that first because we also shouldn’t just blindly jump into another season,” Hunt says. “We should make sure it’s a good idea.”
They met to see how easy brainstorming ideas for Season 4 would be.
“Jason was pretty sure at that point he wanted to do a women’s team, but even then it was like: ‘Should it be the Richmond women’s team? Should it be a team in America?’” Hunt says. “We talked all those things through, and eventually we were like: ‘No, no, the show’s in Richmond, and we put the Richmond women’s team there in that final montage. Let’s follow that.’ We talked about a lot of big-picture things and just came away with the feeling like: ‘Yeah, all right. There’s enough here. The soil remains fertile, so let’s have a go.’”
What is ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 about?
Season 4, set to premiere Aug. 5, picks up three years after leaving Richmond. Ted is now working as an assistant manager at a local grocery store in Kansas City. Though he might not be entirely devoted to his new career, it allows him to be a present dad for son Henry (recast as Grant Feely for Season 4). A visit from Rebecca, Keely and Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) challenges that line of thinking.
“When this offer comes in, all of a sudden, of coaching the women’s team, it starts to shine some light on the fact that if he’s not being the best Ted he can be, then is he inherently not being the best dad he can be?” Hunt says. “Does part of being a good dad mean showing your child you being the best version of yourself, and you leaning into your mission, not just trying to make time for other people in your life, no matter how beloved or legitimate those people may be?”
So Ted goes abroad to coach AFC Richmond’s women’s team, reuniting viewers with Kent, Coach Beard, pub owner Mae Green (Annette Badland) and more.
Jason Sudeikis ‘tries to make the show better until the last possible second’
In June, Waddingham issued a metaphorical penalty card to outlets reporting on a feud with Sudeikis, after speaking to Variety about his propensity for rewrites. In an Instagram Story, Waddingham critiqued the notion as “ridiculous,” according to Entertainment Tonight. “Is it a quiet news day or something?! Get a life!!!”
Sudeikis “will be on that laptop trying to make the show better until the last possible second,” Hunt says. “And I think that has been one of the things that’s made the show the best show it can be. And that speaks to his ‘SNL’ background as much as anything, and sketch background.”
Hunt says Sudeikis, who joined “SNL” as a writer in 2003 and became a cast member before leaving in 2013, believes “‘OK, well we haven’t shot it yet, so we can still make it better.’ And we’ve been very fortunate to have a cast who are very agile at rolling with what we throw them at the last minute.”
How the Ted Lasso and Coach Beard appearance at the World Cup Final came to be
Hunt and Sudeikis appeared in character during the FIFA World Cup Final on July 19 to introduce Justin Bieber for the halftime show.
During the surprise cameo, Sudeikis told Bieber: “Go out there. Don’t be nervous. Nobody’s watching. Make us proud.” Meanwhile, Hunt held up a modified substitution board with Bieber’s initials and a yellow and blue “BELIEBE” sign, a parody of the “BELIEVE” reminder that hung in the Richmond locker room.
And that cameo, Hunt says, was all thanks to Coldplay’s frontman.
“Chris Martin apparently called Jason back in February and said, ‘Hey, we’re doing this halftime show for the World Cup Final, and we think Ted Lasso should be in it,’” Hunt says. “And because Jason is the best friend in the world, he said, ‘Wow, well, if Ted Lasso’s going to be in it, Coach Beard should probably be in it too, huh?’
“Then suddenly I was roped in, then had to sit on it as a secret for five months,” Hunt adds with a laugh, noting that he shared the information only with his wife, actress Shannon Nelson.
At the rehearsal July 13, Hunt says, it felt “absolutely surreal” to meet Bieber and his fellow performers, Shakira and Gustavo Dudamel, music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
And though the bit on game day “came and went quickly,” Hunt says, it’ll stay with him forever.
“You try not to think about what it was while it was happening, and now it’s just going to be this crazy-ass thing to look back on for the rest of time.”