Jason Sudeikis in ‘Ted Lasso’. Photo:
AppleTV+
Is Ted Lasso joining a new team?
On the March 14 episode of the New Heights podcast, the actor, 49, revealed one major change for the newly-announced fourth season of Ted Lasso.
“Is there season 4? Is it in the works?” host Jason Kelce and his brother Travis Kelce, added, “Are we allowed to say that?”
“I think you can ask it, yeah. That’s what we’re writing,” Sudeikis responded. “We’re writing season 4 now.”
He added, “That’s the official word, yeah. Ted’s coaching a women’s team.”
From left: Juno Temple and Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso.”. Apple TV+
As fans may recall, the end of season 3 saw Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) pitching Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) an exciting new project of AFC Richmond women’s team, while the beloved coach Lasso arrived back in America to be with son Henry.
When Travis, 35, asked if Ted was “coming back to the states,” Sudeikis said, “That’s too many questions.”
“We’ll leave it at that,” Travis responded with laughter and Sudeikis added, “And it’s only because I don’t have — I don’t know.”
Sudeikis admitted that working on the highly-anticipated new season was “exciting” and “daunting” because “we told the story we wanted to tell, but there’s more there and it is a neat group of people to work with.”
He added, “It’s a wonderful group of people, and characters to write around.”
From left: Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham in ‘Ted Lasso’. Apple TV+
Amid the actors‘ and writers‘ strike in 2023, he recalled that “the universe kept just saying things,” adding, “whether [it was] kind folks at airports, or on the internet, or friends of my folks or just other people in the industry… and I was just like, ‘OK, I hear you.”
On the podcast, Sudeikis also opened up about how Ted Lasso came to be. The Saturday Night Live alum first played the character in NBC Sports promo videos seven years before the show premiered in August 2020.
The actor recalled that initially NBC Sports wanted to model the persona after “a coach character that I had played on SNL, which was much more of a yelling type.” He added, “He had a mustache, but he was a yeller and screamer like a Bobby Knight type.”
However, he thought it would be a “more fun play” to create a “softer version” of the character.
“And so that’s where the voice sort of came out, which was just a way that I would talk when you’re just sort of doing stuff with your friends and joking around, and playing a certain type, voice type coach,” he said. “And it sounded a little bit like Bill Self, sounded a little bit like Roy Williams.”
However, he noted, “it wasn’t specifically after them.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Apple TV+ confirmed that Ted Lasso will return for a long-awaited fourth season on March 14.
“As we all continue to live in a world where so many factors have conditioned us to ‘look before we leap,” Sudeikis said in a press release. “In season four, the folks at AFC Richmond learn to ‘leap before they look,’ discovering that wherever they land, it’s exactly where they’re meant to be.”
