Jason Sudeikis says a certain Foo Fighters track is helping inspire the writing for the second season of one of TV’s most feel-good shows, Ted Lasso.
Speaking to Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus for the After School Radio show, the co-creator of the Apple TV+ series spoke about the significance of the rock band’s song “My Hero,” and in the process, revealed how it influences his work on the show. The connection is based in the comedian’s approach to sketch writing, which he said frequently involves songs.
“For me the reason why I feel like it changed my life was, I’ve done sketch comedy, and I liked writing and I still like writing to songs if there’s a song that inspires a sketch idea,” he said. “When we were on SNL I would write a lot of sketches to music.”
Among his favorite recurring sketches are what the comedian-actor calls “bar songs,” which involve “four guys sitting around listening to a song.”
“The first one I did was an idea that I’d had to ‘Danny’s Song’ by Loggins and Messina,” Sudeikis recounted. “Especially when it’s something that went verse into the chorus, verse into the chorus, you would tell a story joke during the verse, and then everybody comes into the chorus and sings the chorus. Then you go, ‘Oh, you know, this song reminds me of this, this song reminds me of that and then you go into that.’ “
The sketch Sudeikis references appeared in a 2007 episode of SNL featuring the comedian along with Will Forte, Bill Hader and guest host Rainn Wilson sharing memories about their lives that quickly went from sentimental to bizarre. “We probably did like six or seven of those,” Sudeikis said of the skit style, which worked for live sketches, he said, because “you don’t have to pay for the rights.” But that’s also why it ultimately came to an end, as SNL wasn’t going to keep paying for song rights for best of collections or online.
The relationship between Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” and Ted Lasso, Sudeikis said, is similar to those music-influenced sketches, with the track becoming the first time the actor ever heard a song and “felt that I saw a whole movie about that song.”
“At least my interpretation of it. I’ve never spoken to Gus nor Dave or any of the guys in the band about what that song is about,” he clarified to Hoppus.
While he’s never “tried to research what it was about,” the Ted Lasso star says he still had his own takeaways that have made their way into the writing of the show’s second season — a realization that hadn’t entirely occurred to him before appearing on the show.
“I knew what it is about for me and some of those themes are literally being used in season two of Ted Lasso, which I hadn’t put together until I put together this list,” he said. “Just the idea of false prophets or don’t meet your heroes. Or the idea of like all statues have clay feet, I think is another example of that. People are human, you know, people are human.”
While Sudeikis says this “doesn’t happen all the time” now, he is more attentive when a song seems to leave an impression on him. “I pay attention when a song becomes a muse, whether you end up using the tune or not,” he said of his writing process. “I saw a beginning, middle and end to a story in that song for me. That was really profound at 21-years-old, 22-years-old, having just moved to Chicago to try this acting out.”
This article originally appeared in THR.com.
