{"id":980162,"date":"2026-08-04T13:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T13:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/980162\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T13:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T13:43:17","slug":"meet-ted-lassos-newest-soccer-coach-in-season-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/980162\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet ‘Ted Lasso’s Newest Soccer Coach in Season 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTanya Reynolds was not initially sold on Ted Lasso<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen her reps reached out about the possibility of a major role in season four, the English actress had never seen the Apple TV show. At that time, Reynolds was so consumed by other work \u2014 performing in The Seagull and rehearsing for 1536, both on stage in London\u2019s West End \u2014 that she didn\u2019t have the kind of bandwidth that auditioning would require.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, a month or so later, the opportunity came back around, and, having now wrapped The Seagull, Reynolds agreed to put herself on tape. After all, the scene she\u2019d be reading was legitimately funny. Plus, Lasso was one of TV\u2019s most decorated series, winning 13 Emmys (including two best comedy trophies) and a Peabody, and, in the three seasons prior<\/a>, had made bona fide stars of its cast.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore she knew it, Reynolds \u2014 who was then best known in TV circles as Lily, a teenage writer of alien erotica, on Netflix\u2019s Sex Education \u2014 was hired as Alice, the assistant coach of AFC Richmond\u2019s women\u2019s soccer team and the most significant new face of Lasso\u2019s fourth season<\/a>. \u201cJason had asked to have a Zoom with me, which I assumed was part of the audition process,\u201d she says, referring to creator\/star Jason Sudeikis<\/a>, \u201cbut he just sort of offered me the job on the Zoom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continues: \u201cAnd I still hadn\u2019t seen the show, so I wasn\u2019t entirely sure what I was being offered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo her credit, Reynolds swiftly rectified that, bingeing the first three seasons to get herself up to speed. \u201cI absolutely loved it,\u201d she says, \u201cand totally got the hype.\u201d But without any scripts at that point in the process, she knew only what Sudeikis had told her about her character, who was being introduced as the series shifted its focus<\/a> from AFC Richmond\u2019s men\u2019s team (seasons one through three) to its women\u2019s one (season four<\/a>). Unlike the players, Richmond\u2019s executive suite, which includes Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Keeley (Juno Temple), Roy (Brett Goldstein) and Ted (Sudeikis), would all be back.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat Sudeikis had told her was fairly straightforward: Soccer had been Alice\u2019s life, but after suffering from a recurring ACL injury, she\u2019d segued to coaching \u2014 though she\u2019s not a natural coach, at least not initially. \u201cA lot of the series\u2019 arc for Alice is about her finding her best kind of coach self and learning how to better communicate and be vulnerable with the team,\u201d says Reynolds. \u201cI was very interested in this idea of this character who is very brittle and spiky on the outside but inside is actually quite wobbly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike the women cast as the AFC Richmond players, who had to audition as actors as well as athletes, Reynold\u2019s soccer know-how was far less relevant. Still, she requested a follow-up Zoom with Sudeikis to make sure he was aware of her lack of athleticism. \u201cI got really paranoid because the thought of me playing a coach is quite hilarious to anyone who knows me,\u201d she says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Listen, man, you\u2019ve not met me but I\u2019m not this character. I can give it a go, but I\u2019ve never kicked a ball in my life.\u2019 And Jason just was very Ted Lasso about it, like, \u2018Well, I think you are.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOver time, she got comfortable, but not without some early nerves. \u201cFor the returning cast, they know their characters inside out \u2014 but for us, we were still figuring out who we were,\u201d she says, though she did get plenty of pep talks from Lasso vets like Temple and Waddingham. And to Reynolds\u2019 delight, as the writers got to know her and her voice better, they started to write to her, which, she jokes, is why the character became less bulldog and more chihuahua over time. Still, none of it was easy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m nervous on any job, but I was particularly nervous on this because it\u2019s a show that everyone loves so much,\u201d she says, \u201cand you\u2019re stepping into it as this new character who, at the beginning, especially, is not particularly likable. I just really felt the pressure of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTed Lasso returns to Apple TV on Aug. 5, and rolls out episodes weekly. Read THR\u2018s cover story with Jason Sudeikis and the Ted Lasso cast<\/a> on why they returned for season four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tanya Reynolds was not initially sold on Ted Lasso. When her reps reached out about the possibility of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":980163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[4964,171,1801,55761,12359,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-980162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-apple-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-jason-sudeikis","tag-ted-lasso","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117037538308425133","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/980163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}