Jason Sudeikis Explains How Ted Lasso Was Inspired By Donald Trump

Sure, Ted Lasso features a lot of “locker room talk,” but not that kind of locker room talk!

In a lengthy interview with British Sunday newspaper The Observer, four-time Emmy-winning actor Jason Sudeikis spoke about the upcoming conclusion of his hit series Ted Lasso. The show, synonymous with kindness and general good vibes, already had an unusual origin story (much like Ernest P. Worrell, the character began as advertising.) But the 47-year-old Saturday Night Live vet made the equivalent of an all-caps tweet concerning the backstory to AFC Richmond’s coach, and its unlikely connection to Donald Trump.

It was back in 2015, and Sudeikis was having dinner with his then-partner Olivia Wilde. He was wondering if he could revisit the Lasso character, an American football coach pretending to understand soccer. (The short videos were made by NBC Sports to promote Premier League coverage in 2013.) The original character was, as Sudeikis put it, “belligerent,” but something gave him the idea to spin it around.

“It was the culture we were living in,” he explained to The Observer. 

“I’m not terribly active online, and it even affected me. Then you have Donald Trump coming down the escalator. I was like, ‘OK, this is silly,’ and then what he unlocked in people… I hated how people weren’t listening to one another. Things became very binary, and I don’t think that’s the way the world works. And, as a new parent—we had our son Otis in 2014—it was like, ‘Boy, I don’t want to add to this.’ Yeah, I just didn’t want to portray it.”

Perhaps it was intuition, then, that inspired Trump’s once and, quite possibly, future rival Joe Biden to invite Sudeikis and company to the Oval Office, where the Ted Lasso team held an optimism pep rally in support of mental health. (That it happened to coincide with the launch of the third season series launch was surely a happy coincidence.) 

In the new interview, Sudeikis suggested that being around White House sets for all those years on SNL soothed his nerves. (Co-star Brett Goldstein was apparently “freaking out about what to do with his hands and spent the whole time trying not to swear.”) The star has yet to look at photos of the event, which featured a moment of unscripted testiness from a reporter before the scheduled in-character briefing. “I want it to just live up there for a while,” he said, pointing to his forehead, adding that his mother texted him that day reminding him not to wear sneakers to the White House. “I was like, ‘Too late, Mom,’” he said. 

Ted Lasso’s final episode will stream on Apple TV+ on May 31. The series has won 11 Emmys off of 40 nominations. Time and again, all involved have said the show will end this season, but the door remains open for potential spin-offs. 

Donald Trump, a former steak salesman and game show host, was recently arraigned in New York City on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He was also found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in E. Jean Caroll’s civil trial, and ordered to pay $5 million in damages. (He has filed a notice of appeal.) Trump also represents two of the four presidential impeachments in U.S. history.