‘Ted Lasso’ star Brendan Hunt addresses Ted’s absence from Beard’s wedding
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The Season 3 finale of “Ted Lasso” left fans with many burning questions, some of which Emmy Award winner and 2021 acting nominee Brendan Hunt tried to answer last week during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session.
“I’M HERE, BABY! Before I launch in – thank you, from all of us who have worked on this show, for your eyes and your emotions and your support,” Hunt, who co-created the show and stars as Coach Beard, wrote on June 1. “We never imagined a tv show about soccer, on a streaming service that didn’t exactly exist yet, could ever have been so fortunate as to have this kind of following. WE APPRECIATE YOU ALL.”
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One of the bigger dangling threads left behind in the closing moments of the third season finale – much of which plays like a possible series finale – was the status of Beard’s friendship with Ted Lasso himself (Jason Sudeikis). After getting off Ted’s flight back to America by faking a health emergency so that he could be with his love, Jane (Phoebe Walsh), Beard is shown marrying his longtime partner. But in a twist some took issue with, Ted isn’t in attendance at the wedding.
Asked in the Reddit AMA why Ted didn’t come to the wedding, Hunt wrote, “There are a few reasons. The first is narrative: Ted just got on a plane and left the UK, it would be anticlimactic and deflating if we suddenly see him back there before we even see his plane lands. The other is that that’s just the kind of friendship Ted and Beard have. Case in point is me and Joe Kelly, co-creator of ‘Ted Lasso’ and one of the best friends I’ll ever know. A few years ago I get an email from him and his fantastic girlfriend that they are getting married in LESS THAN A MONTH. The email clearly stated ‘no worries if it’s too short of notice’ which was awfully nice of them; I desperately wanted to be there but I couldn’t. They had scheduled the wedding the same day as a show I was doing in another city, if I recall correctly. So I missed the wedding, and guess what: no one cares! Our relationship is the exact same, our families live down the street from each other and we see each other all the time.”
Hunt wrote that he expected Beard had called Ted “and told him he could sit this one out, and Ted said thanks because the ceremony conflicted with a big game for Henry’s soccer team.”
Of their friendship, Hunt added that Beard and Ted have a history of going long stretches without seeing each other. “They love each other, they will see each other again,” he wrote.
Asked by another Reddit user if the sequence was meant to be a dream or something that happened in reality, Hunt wrote that the wedding was real.
During the Reddit AMA last week, Hunt also addressed criticism of the Beard-Jane relationship due to the show presenting Jane as emotionally abusive to the assistant coach. “I respectfully reject the assertion that Jane is abusive; they may be a little toxic, but as Ted says, their baggage goes together real nice (paraphrasing); they feel like they’re the right person for each other,” Hunt wrote. “If I may speak to Jane and Beard more broadly: I was drinking with a buddy of mine a few years ago. He had been in a long relationship that had turned very sour, and all of his friends wished he was out of it. But I had heard that he and (let’s call her) Zelda had broken up. So I say to him, ‘Congrats on the breakup, man. It’s gonna be so good for you. She was bad news, and everybody thought so.’ He paused and said, ‘We’re back together.’ The lesson for me, besides to avoid ever including/outing ‘everybody’ in expressing my own feelings: I am not inside the relationship I see. What makes these people happy is not something I can truly know from out here. My friend may or may not come around to what the rest of us feel, but he will do so on his own time. Until then, if he is happy, then I am happy too.”
Hunt said Beard loves Jane and suggested the coach – who was once addicted to meth, as the show revealed in Season 3 – was “addicted to her pheromones.”
“Is he making the right long-term decision? Don’t know. Is he doing something that he wants to do right now? Certainly. And there is joy to be had in that. I am happy for Beard and I wish him luck,” he wrote.
As for the future of “Ted Lasso,” Hunt wrote that he wasn’t sure what happens now. “We don’t know. We need a break and will take one presently,” he wrote when asked if there might be a Season 4 or even spinoffs from the show in the future. “Nothing has been ruled out, everything is possible; but that includes the possibility that we’re done. We won’t know until we’ve sat with it for a while, decompressed, etc.”
“Ted Lasso” is a favorite to score multiple Emmy nominations this year. The show’s first two seasons won Best Comedy Series. It’s widely expected the final season will win the top award as well.
All episodes of “Ted Lasso” are streaming on Apple TV+.
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