Ted Lasso Season 2 Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence on Why ‘Ted Lasso’ Needed to Focus on Mental Health in Season 2 [Video]

Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence on Why ‘Ted Lasso’ Needed to Focus on Mental Health in Season 2 [Video]

Ashley Bissette Sumerel EMMYS, Interviews, Ted Lasso

Following Ted Lasso’s win for Outstanding Comedy Series as well as Jason Sudeikis’s win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy, the cast and crew joined reporters backstage at the 74th Emmy® Awards to discuss the hit series. 

If you’re caught up, you know that Ted Lasso Season 2 went for some more emotional storylines and took big steps in addressing mental health.

Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence spoke about the need to focus on mental health storylines during the show’s second season.

74th Primetime Emmys – Press Room
74th ANNUAL PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS — Hannah Waddingham, Toheeb Jimoh, Brett Goldstein, Kola Bokinni, M.J. Delaney, Jeremy Swift, Cristo Fernández, Declan Lowney, Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed, Ashley Black, Phil Dunster, Jane Becker, Bill Lawrence, and crew members, winners of Outstanding Comedy Series for “Ted Lasso”, pose in the press room — (Photo by Evans Vestal Ward/NBC)

“One of the things that Jason talked about in the writers’ room a lot was — especially in a pandemic and with a lot of people out there struggling — was wanting to do stories about mental health and self-care. And I thought the most clever thing that he and Brendan [Hunt] and Joe Kelly brought to this was a character that there was much more beneath the surface than you can ever imagine,” Bill Lawrence said.

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Watch the interview clip with Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence backstage at the Emmys:

“Watching that get revealed the second season and the depth that it had, I think that’s the reason that the show works. And kudos to everybody for writing it and for the way it was portrayed,” Lawrence added.

“We knew Ted was going to have a panic attack in the first season,” Sudeikis said.

74th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards - Season 74
74th ANNUAL PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS — Pictured: Jason Sudeikis accepts the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series award for “Ted Lasso” on stage during the 74th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)

“We feel compelled to explain why certain things happen. Why Rebecca is the way she is, why Nate goes on the journey that he goes on in Season 2,” Sudeikis continued. “We wanted to explain what Ted was going through as best we could, and the fact that people have responded to it and have felt themselves be seen through that character is remarkable.”

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This was the second year in a row that Ted Lasso won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. It was also the second year in a row that Jason Sudeikis won the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy. 

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Ashley Bissette Sumerel is a television and film critic living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is editor-in-chief of Tell-Tale TV as well as Eulalie Magazine. Ashley has also written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Insider. Ashley has been a member of the Critics Choice Association since 2017 and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her work as an editor and critic, Ashley teaches Entertainment Journalism, Composition, and Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.