It seems the title character of popular Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso was not initially written as happy crusader of kindness. Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses, We’re the Millers) recently spoke with The Guardian about the change.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ted Lasso was originally created for a comedy skit a few years prior and was written to be a lot more “belligerent.” The change came because of “the culture we were living in,” said Sudeikis. “I’m not terribly active online and it even affected me.”
He continued, “Then you have Donald Trump coming down the escalator. I was like, ‘OK, this is silly,’ and then what he unlocked in people… I hated how people weren’t listening to one another. Things became very binary and I don’t think that’s the way the world works.”
The first season of the comedy was released in 2020, during the height of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Sudeikis added that, “as a new parent – we had our son Otis in 2014 – it was like, ‘Boy, I don’t want to add to this.’ Yeah, I just didn’t want to portray it.”
Ted Lasso follows Sudeikis’ eponymous character, an American college football coach who travels to London to manage an English soccer team called AFC Richmond. The protagonist is known for his cheery and optimistic manner despite having no knowledge of the sport. The series has been well-received, winning eleven Emmy awards, two of which were back-to-back for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2021 and 2022. Sudeikis himself won two Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor.
The sports comedy has not yet been renewed for a fourth season, nor has news of a cancellation been announced. Sudeikis said in another interview that season three “is the end of this story that we wanted to tell, that we were hoping to tell, that we loved to tell.”
Seasons one and two of Ted Lasso are available to stream on Apple TV+. Season three episodes are released every Wednesday.