“I wasn’t going to have Ted uproot their life to justify the money truck,” the actor said ahead of the upcoming season 4
Credit: AppleTV+
NEED TO KNOW
- Jason Sudeikis is back for season 4 of Ted Lasso, but he wasn’t initially sure whether he’d want to continue the story
- Sudeikis told The Hollywood Reporter, which reported a payday of over $1 million per episode by season 3, that his hesitancy “wasn’t a negotiation tactic”
- “I needed it as much as other people do,” he added of the show, which premieres its new season on Apple TV Aug. 5
Jason Sudeikis wasn’t totally sold on doing more Ted Lasso at first.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter for a cover story published Wednesday, July 22, the star, 50, revealed why he was initially unsure about bringing the series back for a fourth season after his vision for a three-season run.
According to THR, Sudeikis earned $1 million per episode for his work by the show’s third season, which wrapped in November 2022, and he would stand to collect “significantly more if he agreed to continue.” (PEOPLE reached out to a rep for Apple TV for comment.)
“That wasn’t a negotiation tactic,” Sudeikis said of his initial hesitancy. “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.”
Credit: Apple TV+
Ted Lasso was renewed for a fourth season in March 2025, and it officially arrives on Apple TV on Aug. 5.
Sudeikis has previously been candid about the original vision for Ted Lasso as a three-season arc, telling Deadline in March 2023 that it was “the end of this story that we wanted to tell, that we were hoping to tell, that we loved to tell.”
“I know I needed this,” he said to THR of continuing with the show in the new interview. “I needed it as much as other people do.”
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Elsewhere in his latest interview — which also included reflections from costars Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and Brett Goldstein — he looked back on the impact the show has had on fans since debuting in August 2020, sharing that he tells them Lasso “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 said. “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.”
Season 4 will feature the return of stars Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift, with newcomers Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely added to the mix. It follows Ted as he “returns to Richmond, taking on his biggest challenge yet: coaching a second division women’s football team,” per a synopsis from Apple TV.
Ted Lasso won 13 Emmys and two Golden Globes during its previous three-season run. Season 4 premieres Aug. 5, with new episodes dropping Wednesdays through Oct. 7.
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