Kansas City has always been part of Jason Sudeikis’ orbit, but the newest season of “Ted Lasso” is taking that connection and putting it right on screen.
The Apple TV series returns for its fourth season next month, and the first episode, set for Aug. 5, will lean into Kansas City in a way that clearly meant something to the people making it. Co-creator Brendan Hunt said Saturday that the show’s opening feels right because it starts with Ted and with Sudeikis’ hometown.
“Starting it where Ted is and where Jason’s from just felt exactly right,” Hunt said.
That hometown pull runs through the whole project. Sudeikis, who grew up in Kansas City after being born in Virginia and graduated from Shawnee Mission West, has long kept a close tie to the city through events like Big Slick Celebrity Weekend and Thundergong! He said he likes bringing people here and showing off what he called “just a groovy place.”
The production made that connection literal by filming season-four segments in Kansas City that included or referenced Gates Bar-B-Q, Arthur Bryant’s, the Country Club Plaza, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the KC Current’s CPKC Stadium. Sudeikis said the scenes here “were special in a bunch of different ways,” even if the city’s cicadas created some post-production headaches.
He also let his imagination run a little wild about Kansas City’s future. Looking ahead 100 years, he said with a smile, “they’ll probably move the White House here” and pictured it on State Line Road.
Clad in a Royals hat, he added, “If you want to move Mardi Gras here, we’ll give it a shot. Keep bringing your throngs of people.”
But beneath the jokes, Sudeikis kept coming back to what Kansas City gave him and what it gave the show. He said the city shaped the spirit of Ted Lasso from the beginning.
“There’s a spirit of openness and enthusiasm and certainly chattiness with my character that feels unique to the places we had the opportunity to grow up. And the circle of people we got to grow up around.”
He also pointed to a local dynamic that helped define that energy.
“There’s a congeniality that can sometimes be confused, even though it’s kind and open, as being innocent and maybe even naive,” he said. “And yet, I have found that to not always be the case.”
The cast seemed to feel that same pull. Juno Temple, who plays Keeley Jones, said, “me and Kansas City go way back, guys.”
She and Sudeikis both think Keeley would be happy to move here, in part because her personality would fit the city’s welcoming feel. Temple said the affection is tied to how personal Kansas City is for Sudeikis.
“There is a lot of Ted Lasso within him,” she said.
Temple was wearing a Teal Current kit, a nod to her reaction to CPKC Stadium, the world’s first stadium purpose-built for a women’s professional sports team. She said the experience of walking into it hit her hard.
“IN KANSAS CITY!” said Temple, adding that she didn’t know it was possible to feel so moved by merely entering a stadium.
“Because there is something so nurturing about it,” she added, “and I really think that is special and profound.”
She said she brought her little brother to see the stadium and later attend the Argentina-Switzerland quarterfinal at Kansas City (Arrowhead) Stadium, and that the whole trip felt almost unreal.
“Well, that was a beautiful dream.”
Hunt, who plays Coach Beard and is also an executive producer, said CPKC’s location on the Missouri River stood out to him, comparing it to “a diamond on a ring.”
Jeremy Swift, who plays Leslie Higgins, said Kansas City had been on his radar for years because he learned as a teenager that Charlie Parker was from here. That led him to spend time at the American Jazz Museum before he even knew, as he put it, “spoiler,” that it would be “involved” in the filming.
When Swift said he “could live there,” Hunt jumped in with a line of his own:
“Side story: We’re still on the lookout for Charlie Parker’s missing saxophone.”
Swift said Parker and Kansas City native Robert Altman made him think of Sudeikis as a genius.
“Something in the water here,” he said.
Sudeikis even joked that filming in London was “an absolute drag in comparison: the barbecue, specifically.”
Now the show is set to bring those Kansas City connections to viewers when the first episode arrives Aug. 5, with Wizard of Oz references among the “no place like home” touches. Hunt said the timing and setting line up with the story in a way that should feel familiar once it airs.
“The world discovering” Kansas City over the last month, Hunt said, is “exactly what happens to Keeley and Rebecca in that first episode. So you’re about to have deja vu real hard when this thing comes along.”
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