When the camera cuts, the interview isn’t over. With “Cut for Time,” TODAY.com asks the burning questions our anchors couldn’t get to on-air.
Jason Sudeikis has said Ted Lasso is just himself after two beers. So when I chat with the actor backstage at Studio 1A, I guess I’m speaking with the coach.
Sudeikis celebrated the premiere of “Ted Lasso” Season 4 on Aug. 5 with TODAY for not one, not two, but three live interviews, including with co-star Brendan Hunt and new cast members Tanya Reynolds, Faye Roberts, Jude Mack and Abbie Hern. The morning starts on the right foot when the 8:15 a.m. interview with Craig Melvin concludes with a stagehand carrying out two full pint glasses.
This time three years ago, Sudeikis was again promoting the sometimes heavy sports comedy, following an American football coach shipped overseas to manage a British Premier league soccer team, the fictional AFC Richmond Greyhounds. Season 3 was vaguely billed as “the end of the story that we wanted to tell.” In the finale, Ted moved back to Kansas City to be with his young son, Henry.
“There’s no place like home,” Ted says. “But there ain’t a whole lot of places like AFC Richmond either.”
Sudeikis says the voices of characters like Roy, Rebecca and Keeley kept returning, joined by echoes from characters he says he “didn’t know yet.”
“It makes it very difficult to fall asleep,” he told Craig.
The writers secretly reconvened in February 2024, and Season 4 officially premiered on Apple TV Aug. 5 with a Kansas City-centric Episode 1.
“It’s nice to see you know, what Dorothy’s been up to before she heads back to Oz,” Sudeikis, himself a Kansas City native, tells TODAY.com of Episode 1.
Ted, an assistant manager at a grocery story, is now an arguably over-involved parent but floundering when it comes to his own dreams and ambitions. (Sudeikis may relate, joking to Craig on-air, “I think the kids wanted me out of the house a little bit more. They want to see dad do something he loves.”) In the premiere, Ted is visited by Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Keeley (Juno Temple) and Higgins (Jeremy Swift), seemingly under the guise of checking in, but really harboring an ulterior motive: a job offer.
Episode 1 implies he’ll accept and bring Henry and ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders), too. Below, Sudeikis tells TODAY.com about the driving message at the heart of Season 4, welcoming a new cast and what’s ahead for Ted, Henry and Michelle.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Oh, just what he’s been up to, you know, where he’s been physically, but I think also emotionally and spiritually on a soul level. We only got to see a little bit at the end of Season 3, so I think it’s nice to see what Dorothy’s been up to before she heads back to Oz.
Not really, no. I don’t think at that point we had thought a lot about it, prior to coming back, but I think it was fun — fun … yeah this might be the right word — to kind of lean into his occasional dalliance with avoidance.
I mean, it’s pretty incredible the access that we’ve been granted certainly for the first three seasons on the men’s side in the Premier League, but the WSL has been equally as kind, especially the folks at Arsenal, and I have a couple friends that play on that team, too. I think going to see any sporting event, there’s a communal aspect to it that I’ve always appreciated, even from my days going to (University of Kansas) basketball games.
