Brendan Hunt interview: ‘Ted Lasso’
“I believe people sometimes forget that our a main job is just to be a comedy,” states Brendan Hunt about “Ted Lasso” in our recent webchat. He continues, “I’m glad people have found all these other properties for it, and that’s very gratifying. But in the end, our main job is to get yucks. We’ve got to make sure we’re always doing that.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
In its second season, “Ted Lasso” tells the story of the optimistic Ted (Jason Sudeikis) continuing to coach soccer team AFC Richmond in the United Kingdom. Hunt plays Coach Beard, the mysterious assistant coach and long-time friend of Ted. On the origin story of Ted and Beard, Hunt reveals, “Nothing’s official until it becomes canon; like it was uttered by a character on screen. We’ve talked about a few options. We think they met in school, but we don’t know if that school is college or kindergarten. We think that they were apart for a long period, which is where Beard discovered some of his crazier sides. And we think that Ted probably saved Beard in some way. The specifics of it, we haven’t sussed out, and I don’t know if we ever will.”
The actor also co-created the show and serves as a writer and executive producer on the series. Last year “Ted Lasso” won seven Emmy Awards including for Hunt and the other producers for Best Comedy Series. He also received a nomination for Best Comedy Supporting Actor and two nominations for Comedy Writing.
The ninth episode of the second season, ‘Beard After Dark,’ explored a night out for Coach Beard. His eclectic adventure in London involved an underground church nightclub and sparkly pants. The actor admits, “It was exhausting; so much running through London. I’m too old for the running. Beard’s whole thing is to be there for Ted or whoever else might need his particular kind of counsel. So to have the one episode where he’s left his own devices was super fun. It was a combination of some things we’ve talked about in the writers room. We’ve had so many episodes where we almost included a Beard-on-his-own thread. Finally, we were able to get that out of our system in glorious fashion. We didn’t really learn much about him. We learnt his mom’s name, that he’s down on himself, and that he is, despite his insanity, a romantic at heart. He’s the kind of character that if we tell too much then he’s almost useless.”
