Brett Goldstein on Apple TV's 'Ted Lasso' and AMC's 'Soulmates'
Brett Goldstein and Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso”
Brett Goldstein is an actor, writer, director, producer, stand-up comedian, and podcast host. In August, his AppleTV show TED LASSO premiered to great acclaim. In addition to being one of the writers and executive story editor, Goldstein stars on the show as Roy Kent, an aging soccer star who has to face the harsh reality that he may be reaching the end of his career. During its airing, it was announced that the show had been picked up for a second season; a celebrated task that Goldstein had to start working on quickly.
TED LASSO stars Jason Sudeikis as the title character, an American college football coach who arrives to England as an underdog coming to coach a failing Premiere League. Goldstein first got involved when Bill Lawrence, the show’s co-creator, reached out to him and asked him to come write for the show. The two had previously worked together on pilot and remained in touch over the years.
“He literally called me out of the blue,” Goldstein began. “And said, ‘I’m working on this show, and I think you’d be right for it, so come out to L.A. and write on it.’ And I was quite busy at the time, and he said, ‘Well just come out and cancel everything!” I said, ‘But I have a life!’ *laughs* And he said, ‘I don’t care—just come out here.’”
Brett Goldstein and Toheeb Jimoh in “Ted Lasso”
While working in the writer’s room—which he notes is much different in America than in England—he began to feel like he understood the character of Roy Kent and wanted to play him. Having worked as an actor with Lawrence before, the idea of him playing in the show was never quite out of the realm of possibility, but still he was uncertain of how to pitch himself to the team.
“On my last day in the writer’s room—the night before, I did a self-tape and I didn’t tell anybody, I just filmed myself being Roy Kent and did five scenes—I thanked everyone and I left and I emailed it and I said, ‘I secretly think I could be Roy, but I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. If this is shit, we can pretend that you never got this email and we never have to talk about it . . . but luckily they liked it and then I got the part.”
While in his attic writing for the next season of the show, his other project, AMC’s SOULMATES, debuted on October 5th and has also since been picked up for a second season. He got the idea eight years ago while talking with his friend, Will Bridges, who co-created the show with him. They were talking about the idea of love and relationships, and with Bridges having been married with his first child on the way, and Goldstein having just recently had his heart broken, they got to wondering about the idea of soulmates and the “what ifs” when questioning if there could be a test to prove who your soulmate was.
Sarah Snook and Kingsley Ben-Adir in “Soulmates”
The show is set fifteen years in the future to give clout to the idea that science would have had time to develop and successfully execute this test. When speaking about the challenges or benefits to writing in a futuristic timeline, he says,
“We were quite strict with it in terms that it was to be very simple in that we didn’t want it to feel like a sci-fi show . . . we didn’t want flying cars; we didn’t want robots—it should feel like our world. The one idea of the show is that the test exists. The test has to be 100% accurate, otherwise the show is pointless . . . so that’s it. It was just the one rule, and otherwise the show is our world with some fancy phones in it.”
Check out our full interview with Brett Goldstein below, and check out both TED LASSO streaming on AppleTV and SOULMATES airing on AMC.