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Where is Season 3 of Emmy-winning “Ted Lasso”?
Filming has wrapped in England, and the results are in an editing bay somewhere in Los Angeles under the supervision of star Jason Sudeikis, “Lasso” executive producer Bill Lawrence tells USA TODAY.
“Jason is cutting it now, and I’d expect to see the show soon,” says Lawrence, who over the course of the show’s first two seasons transferred more of the workload onto Sudeikis and others.
Lawrence says he has little to do with Season 3, as he’s running a new Apple TV+ show, “Shrinking,” alongside star Jason Segel and writer/actor Brett Goldstein, who won an Emmy for playing cranky “Lasso” footballer Roy Kent and also hads writing duties on “Lasso” along with Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard.
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“It’s been a long shoot, and now it’s in editing, I don’t know the release date yet,” says Goldstein, who has been working via Zoom with Lawrence on “Shrinking” by night and filming “Lasso” outside London by day.
Is a vacation next? “Nah,” Goldstein says with a very Kent-ian growl. “I’m a workaholic. Besides, I had my break. Watched every single game of the World Cup. It was brilliant.”
The anticipation for coming “Lasso” episodes is due partly to the drought fans have experienced since 12-episode Season 2 wrapped in October 2021. The 10-episode first season began airing in August of 2020, a welcome upbeat reprieve for a nation deep in a pandemic funk.
The show scored big with critics and fans alike, an unlikely hit given that it was born out of a goofy ad conjured by Sudeikis, who was channeling an optimistic American college football coach, to promote NBC’s broadcasting of Premier League soccer matches.
“Lasso” won seven Emmy Awards for its debut season, and four more last year for its sophomore effort, including back-to-back wins for Outstanding Comedy Series. Its creators are Lawrence, Sudeikis, Hunt and Joe Kelly.
The success of the show helped Lawrence, best known for “Spin City” and “Scrubs,” land a five-year, nine-figure deal with Warner Bros television that starts this year.
Lawrence says he doesn’t envy the pressure on Sudeikis, which has led to online reports that the Season 3 holdup stems from its demanding star and leader requiring numerous script rewrites. Apple representatives would not comment on those reports or when the third season will be released.
“I ran ‘Lasso’ the first year, but you could tell early on Jason is a monster talent in front of and behind the camera,” says Lawrence. “The second year, Jason and I ran it together, but now he’s got this responsibility of landing the plane with all these big expectations.”
As lead actor, head writer and executive producer of this third – and apparently final – season of the improbable cultural juggernaut, Sudeikis is justified in taking all the time he needs to wrap up, says Lawrence.
“Jason is a perfectionist, and I have tons of confidence in him,” he says. “He’ll knock it out of the park, but not under weird time constraints that don’t mean anything to anyone other than streaming sites.”
