"Ted Lasso," Apple TV’s critically acclaimed comedy, is officially returning for a highly anticipated fourth season, premiering Aug. 5, with new episodes dropping weekly through Oct. 7. Co-created by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, the show famously grew from a character Sudeikis played in NBC Sports promotional ads, evolving into a cultural phenomenon and a defining series for Apple TV.
The new season reunites fan-favorite series regulars Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, Brendan Hunt, and Jeremy Swift, while welcoming fresh faces to the field, including Tanya Reynolds (“Sex Education”), Faye Marsay (“Game of Thrones”), and Aisling Sharkey (“Jurassic World Dominion”).
For anyone wondering what it takes to join the AFC Richmond family, our comprehensive industry guide breaks down the series' casting process, insider audition tips, and how landing a background role could be your ticket to the set of one of TV's most heartwarming comedies.
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“Ted Lasso” follows the titular college football coach as he is recruited to lead an English Premier League soccer team, the fictional A.F.C. Richmond, despite his lack of knowledge of the sport. Ted’s inexperience proves appealing, however, as the team’s new owner, Rebecca Welton, hopes he’ll coach the team to fail and thereby crush her ex-husband, Rupert. She acquired the team he loves more than anything—even her—in the divorce, so watching the team crash and burn would be the ultimate payback.
But as Ted finds his footing, he begins to win over all those who doubted him. By the end of Season 3—spoiler alert!—Ted decides he must return home to Wichita, Kansas, so he can be closer to his son and ex-wife. Season 4 will explore how he and his Richmond crew tackle new challenges as Ted makes his Richmond comeback by coaching a second division women’s soccer team this time around.
Returning cast members include:
- Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso
- Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton
- Juno Temple as Keeley Jones
- Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent
- Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard
- Jeremy Swift as Leslie Higgins
New additions include:
- Tanya Reynolds
- Jude Mack
- Faye Marsay
- Rex Hayes
- Aisling Sharkey
- Abbie Hern
- Grant Feely
Theo Park (“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”) has been the main CD on “Ted Lasso” since the series began.
For those who may be in between jobs, Park encourages creating your own opportunities to break into the business. “Film something and stick it on YouTube.… You can get a retweet, and suddenly thousands of people are watching your sketches or whatever,” Park told us. “It doesn’t have to be a sketch. It could be anything—a monologue, whatever you want to do. Just film something, stick it out there, get on social media, and tweet it. That could be the best thing to do.”
“Ted Lasso” primarily takes place in two locales: Kansas and England. For Park, that meant switching up her usual approach. “It was a bit different from a lot of other jobs. The producers were in America for most of the prep period, but I was lucky enough to get Jason and Brendan Hunt over from America for a day of casting Rebecca. She was our female lead, so we had to start there,” Park told us. “In that time, I was able to pick their brains on the other roles. For the most part, I would just put people on tape and send the tape to Jason and the other producers, and they would decide from tapes.”
She also noted that they aimed for authenticity when casting the players, which meant those who tried out had to have some soccer experience. “The boys on the team had to play football to a good standard, so we made them do little videos of their skills, which were really great,” Park said. “Cristo Fernández, who plays Dani Rojas, had one of the best self-tapes I’ve ever seen in my life. His football skills are fantastic. I saw some brilliant tapes—really creative self-tapes—from actors showing us their football skills.”
“We did try to branch out a bit and try and find real footballers,” Park said. “For example, there’s this role of a girl—she’s actually just called ‘Soccer Girl,’ but she’s quite an important role. She had to be really cool but also play football really well. We tried to find girls’ and women’s football clubs. My associate and I would go and meet them at the after-school clubs and video them showing us their skills. We also had some of them come to the office, and we’d take them out into the car park and video them with the football that we bought. It’s exciting when you get those sorts of jobs where you can really branch out; it’s not just straight auditioning in a room with someone. It was really fun.”
In some instances, actors who auditioned for one role ended up landing another, including Mohammed. “Nick came in for Higgins and he wasn’t quite right. Obviously, Jeremy [Swift] was totally perfect for what they had in their mind,” Park told Awards Radar. “We were still going on and I said, ‘We should be trying Nick Mohammed.’ We called up Nick and said, ‘Look, it’s not going to go your way on Higgins, but would you consider Nate? We pitched the idea of the character and he said no.… He was too similar to the character he had just been playing on his own show, ‘Intelligence’.”
“And then we begged him. We said, ‘Please, please—really try because we think you’re really right for Nate. And we can tell you that there is a bit of an arc. He’s not just this meek, mild kit boy. At the end of Season 1, he becomes a coach. Please, please, will you reconsider?’” Park said. “And he said, ‘OK, all right. All right.’ And then he did a 30-second audition from his green room and it was so perfect that we just said, ‘Yeah, that’s him. Let’s do the deal. Let’s get him.’ So we had to really twist his arm.”
Although filming for Season 4 is complete, it’s still worth keeping an eye on Backstage for future casting opportunities connected to “Ted Lasso” and other Apple TV productions.
Not sure how to get started? Check out these guides:
You may also be interested in this roundup of background roles that are casting right now, and you’ll also want to bookmark our casting directory page and our guide to auditioning for Apple TV.
Actions speak louder than words: Sudeikis told us that he can best determine an actor’s ability without hearing a single word they have said. “I like watching auditions with the sound off. Once you hear what they sound like, when it comes down to choices—because I have a theory, personally, and it stems from a lot of plane travel: Watching movies on the seat in front of you, where you’re listening to music and you’re watching people, you don’t really want anybody to be able to tell that they’re watching a comedy with the sound off,” he said of his process. “You’re looking for people that have it in the eyes, that keep a little something back, that it’s not all presentational, and that’s a big part of it. And also looking for an essence, not a type.”
His method could help you hone how you portray yourself during an audition. “Acting is less about the talking and more about the being, and a big part of being is listening. If you think acting is all about the talking, then I can tell you right now: You’re a shitty actor,” he added. “We listen to it with the sound on, but before you play it back, watch your audition without the sound on and see if you fucking believe yourself. Because you’ll get caught up in the words.”
Keep it fresh: For Waddingham, prepping for auditions means becoming immersed in the scene, but not so much so that it feels overly rehearsed. Her approach keeps her on her toes and actively engaged with the material. “[I] only read it through once. I put it on a voice app because I have to—it’s the same as I do when I’m learning scenes that we’re going to shoot. I have to hear it as music in my head. I have to hear the reasoning of each character. Obviously, you’re needing to hear the cue lines, as well. For me, I find that I have to hear it in the room as a conversation. So I go straight on to putting it as an audio thing that I can just feel around me,” she told us. “Particularly with self-tapes, I make sure that I have a really good working knowledge of it, but I don’t ever make sure that I’m completely off-book. I stick it up on the wall behind the camera—like, really crudely. I cut out the script bit, get all the rest of the paper out of the way so that my eyeline’s not budging here and there. I think that keeps it more fresh and more coming from your gut; that kind of nervous energy on it is more honest than having it completely in your skin.
Go with your gut: Waddingham also noted that actors must check in with themselves regularly. Trusting your intuition isn’t always easy, but it’s critical. “I was always quite good at checking in with whether I was doing this because I loved it or because I felt like other people thought I should. I would say that I was glad that I followed my gut. Whether it’s playing a nasty shit or someone softer, I always go for the heart of the character, rather than what they look like or having any vanity onscreen,” she said. “I’m happy to lay myself bare on camera, and I think that’s come from my grafting in the theater. So I think the biggest thing is to trust my instincts. When everyone was saying, ‘Oh, no, but you’re a lovely young woman. You should be playing these glamorous roles,’ I was like, ‘Nope, nope, nope—it’s not about that. I couldn’t care less about that.’ And I’m glad that I stuck to my guns.”
Don’t count yourself out yet: Goldstein understands the entertainment industry can be discouraging at times, but that’s precisely why he wants his fellow actors to become their own advocates. “Whatever you want to do that you think you’re not worthy of doing, or you’re scared of doing, or you’re blah, blah, blah of doing—you know deep inside that you’re going to do that thing,” he told us. “So just fucking get on with it. Skip the bit where you worry about it for years.”
“If you are just an actor and you don’t create, you don’t write, you don’t do anything else, you’re literally waiting for a magical hand to come and go, ‘It’s you,’” he added. “Aside from creative fulfillment, from a practical point of view, I think you should all make things. Plus, then you’re not sitting around waiting for the fucking phone to ring all day.”
Goldstein took his own advice when he tried his hand at standup comedy. “I was always scared of it, and I put it off for years,” he said. “One day I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’ll be dead one day. I’ll do it once, and I can tell all my grandkids.’ And then I did it, and the first [set] was incredible, and I thought, Oh, wow. I also realized you have to do this a million times to get remotely good at it, so I just started gigging and gigging. For the next two years, I was fucking awful.” But it was from this experience that Goldstein grew as a performer, allowing him to pave his own path to success.
