Well, it finally happened. The actor who plays everyone’s favorite fictional soccer coach, Jason Sudeikis, and everyone’s favorite hot wings-driven YouTube show, Hot Ones, have finally joined forces, and we’re learning all kinds of things in the process. Specifically, that Sudeikis has a deep affinity for legendary cartoon character Bugs Bunny.
Sudeikis appeared on the latest episode of the ultra popular show with its spartan setup of water, milk, wings and sauces and they covered a lot of ground. Host Sean Evans wanted to get deep with Sudeikis, so he brought up the topic of influences and the comedy genre as a whole.
“You hear a lot about influential acting teachers, Stanislavski, Meisner, and the effect that they’ve had on Hollywood, but I’m curious. What role do you think comedy instructors like [legendary improv coach] Dell Close have played in shaping American humor?”
Sudeikis answers with an an airy “Oh goodness. I mean, unquantifiable. I was lucky to have Dell Close for one year during my time in Chicago in the late ’90s, and it’s not just him. I believe it’s called the ‘pyramid of influence,’ like the people that he influenced and then how they influenced, and how they influenced.”
The hope, he said, is that you “get to do enough of it that your influences rub off.” It’s also a matter of how old you are, he said.
“I think every dude around you know my age, I’m 47 … plus or minus five years of me everybody did Jim Carrey at some point,” he said, laughing. “At some point it either gets beaten out of you or weaned out of you and it just becomes part of your spine.”
What’s Sudeikis’s go to? “I’m probably constantly ripping off Bugs Bunny and not even realizing it.” Guess it’s time to go rewatch Ted Lasso again and suss out those cartoon influences.
Rewatching is going to soon be the only way to experience the incredibly popular show, which airs its final episode next week. Sudeikis recently talked to EW about what it was like filming that final scene in that final season.
“It was a scene in the locker room, and then everybody piled in there, it was jam-packed, which our COVID team was very anxious about, understandably. But, yeah, lot of tears, lot of cheers, lot of clapping. It felt like an actual sports team after their final game, but without really knowing if we’d won or lost, which as Ted says is really not the most important thing, so in many ways we won. There was just this feeling, like a call to arms, to take whatever we made here, and however we made it there, to bring that to wherever any of us go next.”
The final episode of Ted Lasso airs on May 31 on Apple TV Plus.