It's BookWag, Election Angst Edition!

New York Times TV Editor Jeremy Egner Prescribes Ted Lasso Hope-ium. Plus: Louise Penny, Paula Hawkins, Nikki May, and More...

Feeling anxious? The last time things felt this gloomy, Ted Lasso marched into your darkened chamber and yanked back the drapes. Apple TV+’s fish-out-of-water comedy about a Midwestern coach (Jason Sudeikis) and his sad sack English football club won over cynics with sunniness. “I wrote about the show quite a few times when it was on the air,” says Jeremy Egner, the TV editor of The New York Times. “I found it fascinating because it had an unlikely origin in an ad from 2014, for NBC Sports coverage of Premier League Soccer. But it became this emotional beacon for people in the incredibly dark time of the global pandemic.”

Egner’s reporting inspired his book, Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way into Our Hearts, available November 12. He spoke to BookWag about the enduring appeal of the 2020-2023 series (which creators say wasn’t as cheery as you think), and why we need more of its magic now.—BKP

BookWag: It’s nice to be talking about Ted Lasso, an everyman and nice guy, so close to a contentious presidential election. 

Jeremy Egner: The discourse is so nasty right now. And the discourse was so nasty back when Jason Sudeikis started to think about making a story about a nice guy. Sometimes things that seem corny can remind us about the importance of kindness. There was a huge fear people were dealing with and widespread fatigue about the division in our country back in 2020 when the show came out. Right now, if you’re a human being in America, you know how tense everything feels. We are united, in a way, by how lousy we all feel. That was the environment this show entered, and it was legitimately entertaining and funny about people who didn’t want their lives to intersect, but when their lives did intersect, there was a positive outcome. 

BW: The book features interviews with the major players and revisits memorable moments from the show. How did you put it all together? 

JE: An agent approached me about writing a book on the series, and because it was in its final season, we wanted to get something going as quickly as possible. I didn’t know, at that point, who I was going to be able to talk to. Fortunately, I was able to do dozens of new interviews. Since I’d done a lot of reporting on the show I was also able to use my cutting-room floor material, as well as information from the many pandemic-era virtual events and awards panels featuring the stars. There was an incredible wealth of information to draw from. Then comes the task of turning it into some semblance of a narrative. 

BW: What can Ted Lasso tell us about the pandemic?

JE: I like to think of myself as a cultural historian—at least in my thinking if not in my work. Of course, Ted Lasso doesn’t deal with the pandemic at all. What it can tell us is something about the emotional state of the world in 2020, through how enthusiastically it was received. 

BW: Ted Lasso is always described as upbeat, but the show’s co-producer Bill Lawrence sees it differently. He told you everybody treated it as a big burst of sunshine when it’s actually about something much tougher. 

JE: As he pointed out, the main character is getting divorced and living far from his family. The other main character’s husband has left her. The leader of the team is a broken-down veteran facing the end of his career, and so on. One of the reasons the show felt so good to people is that we all go through tough journeys. In Ted Lasso, each time [a character] decided they needed to figure things out for themselves, they intersected with someone else who could help them see things more clearly and [help them] become happier.

BW: Did that theme affect the cast?

JE: One example is that of Annette Badland, who plays Mae the pub manager. She said she could sometimes be judgmental in her life. Through the scripts and acting, learned something about being less so. It’s something she’s tried to take into her life afterward. I’ve heard versions of that over and over in my reporting. I’m also trying to absorb it and carry it forward. 

BW: Mental health issues were very important in the series.

JE: The creators very deliberately wanted to get mental health into the show. One of the big sub-themes is that in sports at every level, people haven’t been good about talking openly about mental health issues. We’ve seen a big shift in this over the past decade, and the show wanted to be part of the conversation. 

BW: You’ve logged a lot of screen hours. What makes Ted Lasso so special?

JE: Look, I’m a cynical journalist who watches TV all the time. My default mode is: This is one of those shows that does this or does that. I felt this show working on me in ways that really surprised me and I finally had to give myself over to it. But I was surprised more to find it was working the same way on its cast and crew. The amount of emotion and gratitude I heard from people who were on set was almost akin to religious fervor. And I mean, most of these people are Brits, they’re not often emotionally effusive. At one point at the wrap party, Jason Sudeikis said “Let’s all carry this forward into our lives.” It was an underdog story told by a bunch of underdogs who knocked it out of the park.

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Gather Me by Glory Edim

Edim founded Well-Read Black Girl, which began as a book club and burgeoned into a festival, podcast, and online community. This memoir revisits her Virginia childhood, during which Edim’s Nigerian-born mother and a high school English teacher encouraged her love of reading. When Edim suffered from depression after attending Howard University, great storytelling helped her navigate hard times. Her book is a moving personal story and a salute to Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and other writers who helped her find her way.

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The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins