Despite Ted Lasso’s famous refrain that he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere, a vocal minority of the show’s fans believe foul-mouthed Roy Kent may not actually exist. During a time of devastating climate disasters and a war on reproductive health, some are concerning themselves with the question of whether living, breathing actor Brett Goldstein is actually a CGI creation of Ted Lasso. Goldstein addressed the conspiracy theories on social media Thursday.
“My final statement on the matter,” Goldstein captioned his jokey message, in which he appears as an emoji-fied version of himself. “There’s a fucking load of mad shit happening on the internet today, as usual,” he began. “I just wanna clear up something once and for all: I am a completely real normal human man who just happens to live in a VFX house and does normal human basic things like rendering and buffering and transferring data.”
Where did the belief that Goldstein’s character is CGI originate? That would be Reddit’s R/TedLasso subreddit, where some have speculated that “odd body movements” and the way “he glows off the screen” must mean Roy Kent is digitized. These conversations gained steam last week, when messages from this board circulated on Twitter. Ted Lasso co-creator and star Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard, even humorously acknowledged the rumors. “I can neither confirm nor deny that if you entered data into an algorithm for ‘building the perfect actor’ it would produce Brett Goldstein,” he told CNET.
Despite the obvious absurdity of these theories, it’s true that Hollywood has increasingly relied on de-aging techniques and deepfakes in film and TV. If movie magic can transform Robert DeNiro into a decades-younger version of himself for The Irishman or mimic the voice of Anthony Bourdain years after his death, what’s to say a completely CGI character isn’t next? And Ted Lasso has utilized CGI in at least one publicized regard—filling out a 26,000-seat football stadium with computer-generated extras to comply with COVID-19 filming restrictions.
Goldstein, who is Emmy-nominated for supporting actor in a comedy series alongside three of his co-stars, also works behind the scenes on the show. He recently spoke about the pressures of writing Ted Lasso given its newfound popularity. “You have to remember that the thing you made, you made it the way you made not listening to these million other voices,” he told Vanity Fair. “You know what I mean? How we made the thing was not crowdsourced. It’s quite tricky mentally because it’s so wonderful to read the lovely things. It plays in my mind every single day and equally you have to develop some skill where you can switch that off so you can concentrate on this story we’re telling.”
Given Goldstein’s playful denial, viewers would be wise to concentrate on the real, rather than imagined, events happening on Ted Lasso season 2.
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