There’s an air of anticipation in Richmond, the bijou area of London made famous by Apple TV+’s award winning TV show, Ted Lasso. The shops along Paved Court, the narrow pedestrian thoroughfare which hosts Ted Lasso’s front door are being spruced up, the emerald grass on Richmond Green is being mowed, and TV location scouts have been spotted nipping into The Prince’s Head pub, better known to Lasso fans as The Crown and Anchor.
“We start shooting in July,” says Hannah Waddingham, who plays Rebecca. “We thought we’d mourned the loss of this show but now it’s rising from the dead.”
Currently film crews are being hired in London, production schedules planned, last minute script edits made, auditions for smaller roles taking place, and Richmond is being prepped to look its most beautiful to catch the UK’s summer months. (Ever notice how the weather is mostly good in Lasso’s Richmond?)
Two years after season three of the hit TV show ended, co-writer and star Jason Sudeikis, confirmed that there would be a Season Four. He had always insisted the three-season arc was complete and there was unlikely to be more.
But Ted Lasso was always too successful a show for it to disappear forever. With the biggest viewership of any streaming original series in 2023 and nominated for sixty-one Primetime Emmy Awards, it had surpassed all expectations. “I don’t think my Mid-Western sensibilities would even allow my wildest imagination the opportunity to think the thing would become what it’s become. Never in a million years,” says Sudeikis.
Richmond is such a small village that when film crews and big American stars arrive, locals tend to notice. “Everyone loved the film crew when they were here,” confirms Emmy McMorrow who runs Ted Lasso Tours, now a regular feature of Richmond life. “Filming disrupted a lot of local business, but the crew were really nice. And of course, when the show began airing, well everyone loved them even more. A lot of the businesses have seen their trade triple with fans of the show coming here.”
There is no mention yet when Season Four will air but Sudeikis has said that it will be about a women’s football team. “Our writers are literally Jedi Knights,” says Waddingham. “They’re just incredible. And we’ve got like a full room of real feminist men. So we’ve got all the fabulous women there, and the men that are in there, and I think you really see it in the scripts… it’s just so beautifully drawn.”
