T
ed Lasso was big box office in
lockdown. The hit series about
an American football coach
who comes to London to man-
age a Premier League side was
warm and wholesome, a ref-
uge for millions to escape from their
anxieties — the television equivalent of
making sourdough.
The Apple TV+ show scooped a
record number of Emmy nominations
as fans told the nonbelievers that the
show wasn’t really about football; it
was about people like us who hap-
pened to work in football. Brett Gold-
stein was one of the Emmy winners
(best supporting actor for Roy Kent, the
rudest player on the team) and also
writes the series with its creator, Jason
Sudeikis, who plays Ted.
We meet for lunch. Goldstein is film-
ing series three, due at the end of the
year. Is it the end? “We are writing it like
that. It was planned as three. Spoiler
alert — everyone dies,” he deadpans.
He sits still, sipping a decaf latte,
looking somewhat stern with very
expressive eyebrows, which he uses a
lot in the show. He can expect another
Emmy nomination later this month for
the second series — yet more success for
a man who, a short time ago, wondered
whether Hollywood was really for him.
Goldstein, 41, was born in Sutton in
the south London suburbs into a Jewish
family — his dad bequeathed him a love
for Tottenham Hotspur, which inspired
Lasso’s motto about it being the hope
that kills you. After studying film at
Warwick University he spent his twen-
ties and much of his thirties as a mod-
erately successful showbiz jack of all
trades. You may have spotted him in
Ricky Gervais’s sitcom Derek, or caughthis 2015 film, SuperBob, but to most
people he has gone from zero to an
Emmy-winning hero in a flash.
“I’m a 20-year overnight success!”
he says, laughing. “But I get it. Nobody
saw me before. Still, I’ve always made
enough money to pay bills, between
stand-up, acting, writing, editing.” He
is private about his personal life.
Was he ever close to giving up? “No,
I would do it for free — just don’t tell
Apple. But I also had a peaceful realisa-
tion while doing auditions in LA.
I thought, ‘I’m very lucky. I do the thing
I love and earn enough, so if this is the
rest of my life, I’m the happiest guy in
the world.’”
A fortnight after deciding to stop
putting himself up for the meat market
lottery of US auditions he was offered
the job writing for Ted Lasso. By the
time he wrote episode five he realised
he wanted to play Kent: an angry wasp
of a man with various mental andCOVER STORY
‘I’M A 20-YEAR OVER
Brett Goldstein isn’t
just sweary Roy Kent
— he’s the Ted Lasso
writer whose goal
to make ‘nice TV’ is
taking Hollywood by
storm. Now Harrison
Ford is on his team
Ted is our best selves
— he tries to bring out
our best selvesphysical issues who tries to make him-
self a nicer person — which is the
essence of the whole series.
“The nice part of the show,” Gold-
stein explains, “is about people trying
to be better. And that’s unusual. Our
public discourse [on social media] is
terrible. It is now normal for people to
be horrible to each other. Our show
shouldn’t be as refreshing as it is — that
says more about the world it was
brought into. I’ve got far more storiesabout people being lovely than about
people being a nightmare.”
Days after England lost the Euro
2020 final, Sudeikis wore a T-shirt say-
ing “Jadon & Marcus & Bukayo”, in sup-
port of Sancho, Rashford and Saka, the
three black players racially abused
after missing England’s penalties.
But if you ignore the horrors of
social media, does Ted Lasso resonate
because the world is actually full of
kindness and warm-hearted people?
“This is it!” Goldstein booms. “I do
think there is so much stuff put out into
the world on the internet and in art
that tells you the world is bad. And the
world might be bad — but the majority
of people are not. Also, the older I get,
the less horrible shit I want to see. I
hate seeing people get hurt.”
One thing stuck with Goldstein from
a writing course he did a few years ago:
you must love all of your characters.
“Even if you’re writing Hitler,” he says.JONATHAN DEAN
INTERVIEW
Life goals Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent
in series two of Ted LassoAPPLE TV+6 5 June 2022