Jason Sudeikis won’t sacrifice the integrity of Ted Lasso’s story for money.
The actor, 50, revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday, July 22, that he almost turned down a fourth season of the Apple TV sports comedy despite standing to earn a massive paycheck. According to the outlet, Sudeikis was taking home $1 million per episode by season 3 and could collect “significantly more if he agreed to continue” the series.
“That wasn’t a negotiation tactic,” Sudeikis explained of why he wasn’t eager to make more episodes. “The story was told. Ted went home [to Kansas City] to be with his son. I wasn’t going to have Ted uproot their life to justify the money truck. It made no sense to me.”
Sudeikis changed his mind about season 4 when he realized how important the show was to fans — and to himself. When told by viewers that Ted Lasso saved them, he would reply, “It saved me, too.”
“It is infectious to play a character who sees the best in people and isn’t mad at the world for all its foibles and bullies and shadows,” he continued. “It’s not like I’m Daniel Day-Lewis, but it was good to live in that — to have that coursing through your brain and your body all day. It still is.”
Sudeikis concluded, “I know I needed this. I needed it as much as other people do.”
Ted Lasso stars Sudeikis as a bubbly American football coach who was hired to manage a British soccer team despite having no experience with the sport. Though the season 3 finale was widely assumed to be the end of the series after Sudeikis, who co-developed the series, envisioned a three-season arc, it was ultimately renewed for a fourth season in March 2025.
“We’re writing season 4 now,” Sudeikis said on Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast at the time. “That’s the word.”
Teasing the season’s storyline, he added, “Ted’s coaching a women’s team. So there, that’s [happening].”
Sudeikis explained that the 2023 Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes contributed to the decision to continue the series.
“That made the time off that we all earned feel a little less special because everybody was off,” he said. “And it’s heartbreaking because that makes things tougher for not just the actors and writers, obviously, but everybody else involved in making these things, and people behind the scenes, and [who] put up the lights, and make the costumes and all that. All that stuff came to a grinding halt.”
Sudeikis added that he kept getting signs from the universe to keep the comedy going.
“Whether [it was] kind folks at airports, or on the internet, or friends of my folks, or just other people in the industry, other people wherever in any walk of life,” he continued. “It was just like, ‘OK, OK. I hear you, I hear you. We hear you. We’re listening.’ And then, yeah, just more stories kept unfolding and just popping up in our heads. And so, we’re just exploring all that now.”
Ted Lasso season 4 premieres on Apple TV on Wednesday, August 5.
