Jason Sudeikis Says He Changed Ted Lasso’s Original “Belligerent” Personality Due to Donald Trump’s Behavior

Jason Sudeikis said his soccer coach character in Ted Lasso wasn’t initially intended to have an endlessly optimistic personality.

During an interview with The Guardian, published online Sunday, the We’re the Millers actor explained that the original Ted Lasso, which he had created for a comedy skit years before the Apple TV+ series was created, was more “belligerent.”

The first season of the show debuted in 2020, around the same time as a complex political landscape and election. After looking at “the culture we were living in,” Sudeikis decided to change the way the character is portrayed altogether.

“I’m not terribly active online and it even affected me,” the Fool’s Paradise actor said. “Then you have Donald Trump coming down the escalator. I was like, ‘OK, this is silly,’ and then what he unlocked in people.”

Sudeikis, who attended a White House press briefing with his Ted Lasso cast in March to discuss mental health awareness, said before the show premiered, he “hated how people weren’t listening to one another,” and decided that he didn’t want the character’s demeanor to have any similarities.

“Things became very binary and I don’t think that’s the way the world works,” the Horrible Bosses actor added. “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.”

The third, and what Sudeikis claims to be the final, season of Ted Lasso debuted on Apple TV+ on March 15.