Actor Jason Sudeikis felt pressure to maintain his show’s high bar as Ted Lasso 3 returns
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Jason Sudeikis in Ted Lasso 3.
PHOTO: APPLE TV+
LOS ANGELES – The creators and stars of Emmy-sweeping comedy drama Ted Lasso (2020 to present) want fans to know they are not sick of hearing how much the show means to them.
The series – which has won 11 Emmys, including back-to-back Outstanding Comedy Series gongs the last two years – casts Jason Sudeikis as the eponymous Lasso, an American college football coach hired to manage an English Premier League club in the hopes that he will fail.
But he manages to win everyone over with his folksy optimism – just as the show charmed audiences with its unusually uplifting storylines.
The fact that viewers developed such an emotional connection to the series during the pandemic still strikes a chord with Sudeikis, who co-writes and co-creates it with Bill Lawrence, creator of the medical sitcom Scrubs (2001 to 2010).
At a Zoom press conference for Season 3, which premieres on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, Sudeikis says: “I would have preferred that people could have gone on date nights and kids could have gone to school and played with their friends, but if we helped folks through that weird – and, in some cases, still ongoing – time, we’re very happy to have obliged.”
The 47-year-old American, who won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2021 and 2022 for the role, says working on the show was also therapeutic for the cast and crew.
“I know it helped all of us in many ways,” says the star, who appeared in the hit comedy films Horrible Bosses (2011) and We’re The Millers (2013).
“Even shooting Season 2, we got to be face to face with one another between ‘action’ and ‘cut’, and actually feel like we were back in the old times. It was thrilling and healing just in the endeavour of making the thing.”
British actress Hannah Waddingham, who plays AFC Richmond’s owner and Lasso’s boss Rebecca Welton, agrees.
“You can’t beat that feeling when people come up to you and say how much we got their families through one of the most difficult times in everyone’s lives.
“You can’t help but feel privileged about that. It doesn’t matter how many people stop you. They always say thank you and I don’t think I’ve ever been on something where people are like that,” says the 48-year-old, who won an Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy in 2021 for her role.
(From left) Hannah Waddingham, Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein at the Season 3 premiere of Ted Lasso on March 7, 2023.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
And lest fans worry about approaching them to express this, Sudeikis says: “I would encourage anybody who feels the need to say, ‘You probably hear this all the time…’ (by telling them) you don’t have to say that any more, because we do.
“But also, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter. It’s still very heartwarming and flattering, and we’re right there with you.”
When it came to making Season 3 and living up to the glowing reviews and mainstream success of the first two instalments, however, Sudeikis admits he felt a certain weight of responsibility.
“But only to ourselves – that’s how I viewed it.
“The first one was made in the bubble of it not existing (before) and being this invisible thing. Then by the time we were sharing the second season, we had already written it, without knowing the reception and where certain elements were going to go.”
(From left) Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis in Ted Lasso 3.
PHOTO: APPLE TV+
So there is a sense of pressure with the third season – believed to be the final one of a planned three-season arc – ”but really, it’s just about keeping the bar at the level we had it to ourselves for the first two years and trying to clear that, just by the skin of our buns”, says Sudeikis.
“That was the only pressure – it was more internal and within the nuclear Ted Lasso family.”
This season, the show will continue to thread the needle between comedy and melancholy as Lasso and others wrestle with personal difficulties, including mental health struggles, while AFC Richmond faces the prospect of falling to the bottom of the league.
“It is a similar tone,” says Brett Goldstein, the 42-year-old British actor who won back-to-back Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmys in 2021 and 2022 playing team captain-turned-assistant coach Roy Kent, and who is also a writer on the show.
“It’s very funny, but it’s also very serious and very sad.”
Ted Lasso 3 premieres on Apple TV+ on Wednesday.
