“Even thought it’s called girl talk, sometimes it’s more like, ‘Girl, listen …”
That’s one of the most Ted Lasso-y lines that Ted Lasso delivers in the first new episode of Ted Lasso, but it also neatly summarizes the evolving relationship between Juno Temple‘s Keeley Jones, once a model and footballer’s girlfriend who is now the squad’s publicity coordinator, and Hannah Waddingham‘s team owner Rebecca Welton, who previously tried to demolish AFC Richmond as an act of vengeance but now has been happily reborn as a true believer.
As season two begins with the episode “Goodbye, Earl,” both characters are in a better place in part due to the relentless optimism of Jason Sudeikis‘s coach. When we originally met them, they were both far more cutthroat. In season one, Rebecca even set up a paparazzi sting to publicly humiliate Keeley and naive Coach Lasso, but season two has the trio cozying up for “girl talk” on the couch to dish about Rebecca’s newly vibrant dating life.
Temple spoke to Vanity Fair about how this new dynamic on the Apple TV+ series plays out between her and Waddingham.
While “Ted Lasso and the extraordinary female goddesses” may sound like an absurd Harry Potter fan-fic mashup, Temple explains exactly what that means and why it matters now that the show is back…
Vanity Fair: By now you’ve heard from so many people that this show was a surprising bit of hopefulness and optimism in an otherwise bleak time. What are your thoughts on that?
Juno Temple: I think that the reaction was so special with people getting this feeling in their hearts and their minds of looking at a glass half-full perspective. Shooting season two and playing Keeley has definitely helped my mental plenitude for the past five months in this very strange, distressing and complicated time to be alive. I get to have this bright light of a job in my life.
Season two brings us a very different Keeley Jones from the when we first met her.
I think that was an incredible thing to watch, and made you take away the message of don’t judge a book by its cover because everyone’s novel is filled with lots and lots of sentences and chapters and paragraphs. How dare you judge it by just what the colors of the cover are? You’ve got to read every piece of punctuation! Keeley was a great example of that.
What would you consider the major change now?
What’s very special about the show for me is the relationships that was created between Rebecca and Keeley, and having this beautiful friendship between two women who are at different moments in their life. They have different views of themselves, but actually connect on a very, very deep level and help each other see sides of themselves that they wouldn’t know were there. No one has tried to show them before. That was a really precious thing to put on film.
Why does that storyline resonate so strongly for you personally?
It happened off camera as well! Hannah Waddingham is just an extraordinary female goddess in my life. That was a really, really key thing that I’m not sure would necessarily have appeared in other shows. That’s a relationship that I feel lucky to have put on film.
Originally, she was a model, now she’s a publicist. How does that shift in her work life change her?
I think you might not necessarily know how much tension she was chained to in everybody’s daily life. She really wants to encourage people to be the best versions of themselves. If she can help them do that, she’ll do everything she can to get help people see that.
Rebecca is a big part of that, right? Once she was undermining Keeley, but she becomes a great ally.
Rebecca guides her into realizing “Hey you, you should do this as a job.” Keeley has that great line in the first season where she says, “Yeah, I’m famous for almost being famous.” I think when you first meet her, that’s what you think she might be, that she’s not as aware as everybody else around her. She is a very, very big-hearted young woman. That was a lovely journey to go on.
It’s an unusual show because so often in a story, the drama comes from conflict. And I feel like Ted Lasso, the character himself, makes people sort of deescalate their drama. They start to let their guards down and be a little more of who they are deep down rather than having their shields up.
It makes people live in the moment.
Tell me about that.
Well, I think he does that by whole-heartedly being himself, even if that means a sentence comes out of his mouth that makes you have to pause and digest to realize what he’s saying with it. He is a character that makes you live in the present and live in the right now and not constantly be thinking about the next few moments or the next game or the next phone conversation or whatever’s coming next.
Why does that make such a difference for people, “being present”?
Because you can’t control anything else, you know? He’s a character that could also have been potentially annoying or preachy, or any of those things, but Jason is so brilliant at playing Ted and so talented, as are the writing team that created these characters. With Ted specifically, it comes from a humble place, and Jason plays him so genuinely that you can’t help but watch in the present with him. You don’t want to miss a thing.
Another comedy would have taken a character like Keeley and leaned into her being an airhead or somebody who is petty or shallow. It would have mined that for humor, and instead it found depth within her.
She’s very sensitive. I loved it because I felt very much the same about her. I think that our show really did that. You have women genuinely wanting to support and help other women flourish and be the best versions of themselves.
That takes us back to Rebecca and Keeley’s newfound sisterhood?
Often you see women being clashed with each other, and this was so not about that at all. Keeley is very much a character that really, really wants to see other women shine as well. And maybe at the point when you meet her in the first season she hasn’t had a lot of close girlfriends. So she’s really enjoying this friendship that’s happening with Rebecca. I think she’s definitely not shallow. And you’re right. She could have been.
This Q&A has been edited and condensed, with some questions added or expanded for context.
Check back to Vanity Fair each Friday after the latest Ted Lasso episode for a recap and interview with one of the show’s breakout stars.
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