What you need to know
- The next episode of Ted Lasso will be a Christmas episode.
- Co-creator and star Brendan Hunt has warned that there's "plenty more trauma coming up" in the series.
Brendan Hunt, Ted Lasso co-creator and star who plays Coach Beard, has warned that there is "plenty more trauma coming up" in season 2 of the program on Apple TV+.
Hunt made the remarks in a new WSJ feature about how the next episode of Ted Lasso will be a Christmas episode:
Last year, when the company first released "Ted Lasso," its streaming comedy series about an American football coach leading an English soccer team, writers were already hard at work on a second season. They had season 2 mapped out in a 10-episode arc. Then Apple Inc. TV executives wanted more, and asked if the writers had other stories to add. Enter the Christmas episode, which arrives Friday. It features a locker-room Secret Santa exchange, seasonal Ted-icisms ("Hold me closer tiny Dancer, Prancer and Vixen") and a potluck holiday party for AFC Richmond players away from their homes in foreign countries. There are acts of generosity, characters singing and homages to canonical rom-com "Love Actually." (A second extra episode will come later in the 12-episode season.)
Speaking to WSJ, Hunt talked about why Ted Lasso works, and how it balances "kindness porn" with gritty emotional content:
"It's not 'Fern Gully.' People go through s---. It's about where they end up on the other side," says Brendan Hunt, a co-creator of the series and cast member who plays Ted's stoic wingman Coach Beard. "We're a comedy. We are not self-help gurus."
*Spoiler alert
The feature touches on season two's first episode, in which Dani Rojas takes a penalty and kills the team's mascot, Earl, and how fierce debate raged behind the scenes about the episode:
The writers' method for escalating the stakes triggered a big debate behind the scenes. "Dani Rojas cannot kill a dog. We as a television show cannot kill a dog. That's a Top 10 rule of TV, you can't kill a dog," says executive producer Joe Kelly, who helped develop "Ted Lasso" and worked on such comedies as "How I Met Your Mother." "There was some resistance in the [writers] room, but there was considerable resistance from higher up," Mr. Hunt recalls, referring to creative executives who oversee the show at Apple and the Warner Bros. Television studio.
Warning us of troubles to come, Hunt told WSJ that whilst it was Christmas and everyone was going to come back and hug each other, "there's plenty more trauma coming up".
100% exclusive content for the price of a cup of coffee.
With TV+, you can watch well-produced, big-budget TV shows from famed directors, and starring award-winning actors and actresses across all your Apple devices and with up to six members of your Family Sharing group.
