Ted Lasso co-creator and actor Brendan Hunt will likely never get a bigger audience than when he and Jason Sudeikis performed at the halftime show of the World Cup final on July 19. “It was one of the weirdest, coolest days ever,” Hunt told CTV News. “It was a blast. “As big as the occasion was, the job was fairly small. I had three lines; I had to hold up a sign; I had to turn around. It was great.” Hunt plays Coach Beard on Ted Lasso. Season four is now streaming, with a new episode each Wednesday on Apple TV. Hunt and Sudeikis debuted Ted and Coach Beard for a commercial for NBC’s Premier League coverage in 2013. With co-producer Bill Lawrence, they brought greater depth to Ted’s character when the series first aired on Apple TV in 2020. Hunt credits Sudeikis for making Ted more three-dimensional. “He had a very clear vision of the deeper way that he wanted to go with this character, starting with the reveal of the divorce phone call at the end of the pilot. That’s what pushed the series into this sort of stealth emotion mode that people were not expecting,” said Hunt. While several writers worked on the first nine episodes in season four, it was Sudeikis and Hunt who wrote the 10th and final episode. “We have a good shorthand together. We’ve known each other for a fair amount of time. Making it—the two of us—putting the final touches on it in the end, it just feels right.”
