Ted Lasso Doesn't Have Sketch Comedy Origins, But PlayStation's FIFA Had A Part To Play
Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt are setting the record straight about the origins of "Ted Lasso." During a cast panel with Variety in celebration of the hit Apple TV+ show's third season, the show's co-creators were asked about the origin of the Ted Lasso character, and had a surprising answer.
Moderator and Actors on Actors host Jenelle Riley opened up the panel by asking about the inception of "Ted Lasso" as a character, referencing a story that's apparently been floating around the internet about co-creators and stars Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis incorporating the character into sketch comedy early in their careers. "It's not true!" Sudeikis declared, before setting the record straight about exactly how the pair's early days working together at a theater in Amsterdam related to their eventual creation of the mustachioed Midwestern football coach.
The Ted Lasso character was not created in the '90s
"Brendan and I have known each other for many moons, like since '95, '97," Sudeikis shared. He explained that when the pair worked together at a theater called Boom Chicago, Sudeikis "cajoled" everyone into chipping in some money for a Playstation, he admits, "mostly so I could play 'Tony Hawk Pro Skater.'" That's where the pair's clueless-about-soccer versus soccer expert dynamic came about — in real life. Hunt convinced Sudeikis to also buy the latest FIFA game, which Sudeikis says only the two of them played. "While we would play that he would explain to me about — Brendan had just recently and continuously fell in love with soccer as an American football fan, so then we would talk about it," Sudeikis told Variety.
The comedian does note that Hunt went on to do a one-man-show about how much he loved football, one that the theater's manager apparently wanted him to include with a rap. Sudeikis' retelling of the story is hilarious, featuring a reference to T9 texting and a mix-up between "The Music Man" character Harold Hill and "GoodFellas" subject Henry Hill, but the point is that Ted Lasso as a concept definitely didn't exist in the '90s. As Hunt points out, though, Variety isn't the first outlet to reference the story. "It's one of those things that's sort of become the mythology of the show that we have no idea how that happened because it's not true," he says. "We never did anything called Ted Lasso before Ted Lasso."
Lasso was developed for a series of NBC commercials
The Ted Lasso in reference here, though, isn't the Apple TV+ show but the actual origin of the character, a series of 2013 commercials for NBC's Premier League coverage that also starred Sudeikis as a clueless American football coach. "That's when Ted Lasso Came up," Sudeikis clarified. "I knew to call our buddy [eventual series co-creator] Joe Kelly," he explained, "because we were like Goldilocks, the bears. I knew nothing, Joe knew a little bit about both American football and European football, and then Brendan knew European football great."
At the time, Sudeikis admitted, Ted Lasso wasn't so much an actual character as a mustache and a voice, plus a since-evolved look that was initially based on former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka. It wasn't until 2020 that the version of Ted Lasso that we know and love was born into the world via the award-winning comedy, which credits Hunt, Sudeikis, Kelly, and Bill Lawrence as its co-creators.
While the persistent myth about early performances of the character may not be true, it sounds like Hunt, Sudeikis, and European football do go way back. The soccer expert and soccer newbie dynamic that Sudeikis and Hunt cultivated as friends and coworkers back in the '90s led to a delightful on-screen friendship between Ted and Coach Beard, while the Mike Ditka shorts of the character's early days were ultimately replaced by more weather-appropriate khakis.
"Ted Lasso" streams new episodes Wednesdays on Apple TV+.