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In the summer of 2020, the year “Ted Lasso” debuted on Apple TV, the largest audience for a televised soccer match in the U.S. was 1.7 million. Shortly before the soccer-based sitcom returned for a fourth season last Wednesday, nearly 63 million viewers in the U.S. watched the World Cup final.
Brendan Hunt, the actor who plays Lasso’s loyal sidekick Coach Beard in the series, can’t prove the show is responsible for that growth. But since he can’t disprove it either, he’ll just go with the flow.
“I would love it if we’ve had a role at all,” he said. “If we are a pebble in that avalanche, then I’m happy.”
What the Emmy-winning series has undeniably done is bring soccer into millions of unsuspecting households that had previously avoided the sport like a plague. So while Jason Sudeikis, the star and co-creator, alongside Hunt, of “Ted Lasso,” insists the show is not about soccer, the sport sure gets a lot of screen time. And that has made the game more palatable and popular for a public that can now relate to it.
Emmy-winning ‘Ted Lasso’ returns for a fourth season, with Jason Sudeikis coaching a women’s team. Stars Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple also return.
“We tricked them by putting soccer in a comedy show,” Hunt said. “The first thing you’ve got to do to get somebody to become a soccer fan is just make them care about one team, to find one team.
“In this instance we’ve made them care about this fictional team and that easily can transmute, if you’re not careful, into caring about other teams. And then hopefully the sport itself.”
After a three-year hiatus, “Lasso” returned for Season 4 last week with the series’ eponymous title character, played by Sudeikis, returning to Richmond to coach a fledgling second-division women’s team. Hunt’s understated character makes his first appearance of the season in Episode 2 Wednesday.
“He is clearly going through something,” Hunt said. “Is it just what happens to Beard when he’s away from Ted for too long or is there something important that has happened? We’ll find out before too long.”
Speaking of having gone through something, Hunt, who plays a fictional coach for a fictional team, spent the first part of his summer being a very real journalist at a very real tournament, attending 14 World Cup games in more than half a dozen stadiums — including the Spain-France semifinal in Arlington, Texas, which he watched from the press box, and the Spain-Argentina final, part of which he watched from field level.
“That was a really cool experience,” said Hunt, who did a World Cup podcast with Rebecca Lowe, the studio host of Fox’s tournament coverage.
But for Hunt, 54, the most passionate soccer fan among the writers and actors on “Ted Lasso,” the sport was an acquired taste. Half a lifetime ago, Hunt was a die-hard Chicago Bears fan working in residence with an improv group at a small, aging theater in Amsterdam when he got swept up in Dutch soccer culture.
About a possible return of the series for a fourth season, the Emmy-winning co-creator and actor says, “Everything is on the table, including nothing.”