ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO
actor and writer
Brendan Hunt was living
in Venice Beach, Calif.,
subletting a place from
former U.S. men’s
national team midfielder
John O’Brien. Every day he
drove past a woman who
stood on the curb facing
oncoming traffic, joyously
waving to drivers as she
hula-hooped. “I was like,
Why don’t I know how to do
that?” says Hunt. “That’s
the happiest person I’ve
ever seen in my life.”
So Hunt found a hippie
on Craigslist who gave
him weekly hula hoop
lessons on the beach as
they watched dolphins
swim by. “I don’t think
she ever told me her
last name,” Hunt says. “I
always paid her in cash. I
think she said something
about moving to some
commune up north. I hope
she did that and that
she’s happy.”
Hunt used his newfound
talent in a play he wrote,
Absolutely Filthy, in which
his character, based on
Pig-Pen from Peanuts,
uses a brown-and-black
hula hoop to represent the
dirt cloud that follows him
around. He also used it in
his current gig, Ted Lasso,
as part of the denouementof the best episode of TV
in 2021.
After being nominated
for 20 Emmy Awards and
winning seven, including
Outstanding Comedy
Series, in its first season,
Ted Lasso was destined
to encounter backlash
among viewers and
reviewers in Season 2.
And it did. (To be fair, therewas much backlash to
the backlash.) A lot of the
criticism centered on two
stand-alone episodes: a
Christmas show and, more
divisively, one that followed
Hunt’s character, the
mysterious Coach Beard,
through a late night in
London after a brutal loss
to Man City in the FA Cup.
Episode 9, “BeardAfter Hours,” came at
a pivotal time in the
larger narrative, after
major revelations both
about the backstory
of Jason Sudeikis’s
titular fish-out-of-water
soccer coach and about
a will-they-won’t-they
moment involving two
major characters. It
brought the narrative
flow to a complete halt—
intentionally. “I thought
that was gonna be one
of the best things about
it,” says Hunt, who is one
of the creators of the
show and an executive
producer. “I think we all
really liked the idea of,IN THE
WEE SMALL
HOURS
Episode
Of the Year83 SPORTSPERSON OF THE YEAR 2021CO
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