Jason Sudeikis Reveals What & Who Inspired The Premise of 'Ted Lasso'

Most fans know that Jason Sudeikis‘s Ted Lasso series was inspired by a series of commercials.

Now though, the 45-year-old actor is opening up about how he and his two friends came up with the concept in the first place and how it led to the award winning show.

Click inside to see what Jason Sudeikis shared about “Ted Lasso”…

Speaking with Kathryn Hahn in Variety’s Actors on Actors, Jason explained that the show took on a new life following the success of the commercials.

“Me and two of my buddies — Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard on the show, and Joe Kelly, who’s one of the producers and writers on the show. And we’ve all been friends for 20 years,” he shared, adding that “NBC Sports was going to start showing Premier League soccer on their channel”

The challenge was “How do we get Americans to watch it?”

“They’re like, ‘We should have someone play an American football coach.’ I was like, ‘I know who that is. I know how I’d like to do it.’ I knew very little, and I still know very little. There is this very complex, beautiful game that’s been around for hundreds of years.”

Jason continued, saying that his ex, Olivia Wilde, inspired the commercials becoming an actual series.

“Those commercials were received well, and it was Olivia who was like, ‘You should do it as a TV show or movie.’ 2015, we sat down to write the pilot, and it wasn’t until about 2018 that we came back […] To think it was February 2015 when we sat down to write the pilot. That was pre-Ferguson, pre-Time’s Up, pre-Trump coming down the escalator.”

He even thanked Olivia during his Critics Choice Award speech!

Jason also opened up about playing the lead character, who always has a positive attitude towards everything.

“Even down to the glasses that I picked as the character. They make greens greener and blues bluer. That’s an element of why I continue to wear those orange-tinted glasses as the character,” he shared. “I haven’t done them in years, but a big impetus for the character and for the point of view of the show is magic mushrooms.”

Jason added of Ted, “I think it’s the best version of me, but it might be a version of me I don’t realize I’m more capable of being. It might be a way to truly go about doing this gig called life.”