How Ted Lasso Saved Jason Sudeikis

Jason Sudeikis says that Ted Lasso saved him and he “needed” the forthcoming season 4 as much as his fans. “It’s infectious to play a character who sees the best in people and isn’t mad at the world for all its foibles and bullies and shadows,” says Sudeikis.

New images from Ted Lasso - Season 4

The show was meant to be finished back in 2023. After five years of working on it, Sudeikis was exhausted. He had also gone through an unhappy divorce and even though he was offered more money to make further seasons, he was finished. “The story was told. Ted went home to be with his son,”he explains. “I, one hundred percent thought it was done.” But then Sudeikis got some rest. Time passed. “I was like,’Oh, I don’t know if it’s done’,” he says.

“I don’t think there was any chance we weren’t coming back because you are such a champion of the women’s game and women’s sport,” co-star Hannah Waddingham tells him in a glitzy video created by The Hollywood Reporter.  “I thought it was only a matter of time before Apple shut you in a hermetically sealed chamber and went ‘Boy, write the women’s story.”

That did not happen. But the focus of the new season is about Ted coaching a women’s soccer team, described by Apple as his “biggest challenge yet.” New stars include Tanya Reynolds, Tracey Ullman, but, as is always the Ted Lasso way, many new faces, among them Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely.   Veteran star Waddingham warns the new cast: “Enjoy your anonymity now. Just wait till you see your face on a great big billboard.”

Ted and Rebecca in Ted Lasso Season 4

Sudeikis would like this next season to be part of another three-season arc, and all being well, hopes that the writers will be moving on to seasons five and six next year. “I know I needed this,” he says. “I needed it as much as other people do.”

Ted Lasso Season 4 will be out on Apple TV on August 5.