The Big Picture

Phil Dunster campaigned to be a part of the song-and-dance number he performed with ‘Ted Lasso’ co-star Hannah Waddingham for her Christmas special. Dunster misses the complexity of playing Jamie Tartt for three seasons on ‘Ted Lasso.’ There hasn’t been an official word on the future of ‘Ted Lasso,’ but Dunster feels closure. However, he would love to do more, but only if it felt meaningful and not just for the sake of it.

As a Ted Lasso fan, it would be impossible to pick a favorite character because there are so many great ones with so much to love about them. But if you look at the three seasons of the series as a whole, one of the things that stands out the most is the emotional arc of Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster). Going from cocky antagonist in Season 1 to allowing himself to be vulnerable in Season 2 to real and true maturity in Season 3, Jamie ultimately defied expectations through self-discovery that even he would agree changed him for the better. And what was initially a rather toxic relationship with Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) and genuine contempt for Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) evolved into a shared friendship that was truly beautiful.

While there’s no way to know where those characters might end up, if we were to check in with them again at some point in the future, it was fun to catch up with Dunster during awards season and have him reflect on his time shooting the series, the journey he took with Jamie Tartt, what he misses most about playing the character, staying in touch with his co-stars, that he would only want to return for more episodes if it had the same heart and soul, how he ultimately feels about the Jamie-Keeley-Roy dynamic, his experience collaborating with Goldstein, and what sort of reality show the more mature Jamie would be best suited for. He also talked about his song-and-dance number in Hannah Waddingham’s Christmas special, writing and directing the short film Idiomatic, and what his next project will be.

Ted Lasso American college football coach Ted Lasso heads to London to manage AFC Richmond, a struggling English Premier League soccer team. Release Date August 14, 2020 Creator Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Bill Lawrence Main Genre Comedy Genres Comedy , Drama , Sports Rating TV-MA Seasons 3

Phil Dunster Campaigned to Perform With Hannah Waddingham For Her Christmas Special
Image via Apple TV+

Collider: First of all, can we talk about your incredible song-and-dance number with Hannah Waddingham for her Christmas special? That was so much fun and such a fun surprise. How did that come about? Was that her idea?

DUNSTER: It was a mix between me campaigning, for every day that I knew her, to let me do something like that. And then, they probably just ran out of people and were like, “Who else have we got?” No. It was one of those things where Hannah told us that she was doing it, and then one thing led to another. I think that they were sent a video of me playing in a cafe with a guitar when I was 18 and Hannah was like, “I didn’t know that you could sing.” So, it came fairly naturally. Hannah just saw a video of me singing and was like, “Yeah, he’ll make an idiot of himself, for sure.”

Who chose the song? How did that come together?

DUNSTER: That was Hannah and the musical director. They were finding the songs that work best for The Fabulous Lounge Swingers, who we did it with. It was about what suited our voices, really, and wasn’t too challenging for me. That was the remit.

Were you more nervous knowing that it was her project than if it was something you were just doing something for yourself?

DUNSTER: You want to get it right, for sure. I was very nervous before. And then, I saw Leslie Odom Jr. sing his song with Hannah and I was like, “Okay, great. Obviously, I’d never be able to do that, so I’m here to just be a bit of relief.” I honestly had such a joyful time doing it, just watching Hannah. Hannah is a friend and watching her get to be her greatest stage presence was a real treat and an honor. People would probably pay a lot of money to perform with her, and I was very lucky to do that.

Phil Dunster Is Ready to Do a Musical
Image via Ramon Christian

Personally, I had no idea that you had that tucked away in your pocket. How long do we have to wait now before we get to see you do a musical? Is that something you’d want to do?

DUNSTER: Listen, you can join my campaign. Yeah, absolutely. If it’s an interesting project and part to play, it doesn’t matter whether I’m juggling or singing, or anything. I’d love to just try to do something interesting.

There’s such a variety of musical possibilities. You could do something more old-timey if you felt like that was more suited to you, or you could do something original and new.

DUNSTER: Let’s talk. After this, we’ll get together and just toss some ideas around.

Now that you’re this far out from finishing Ted Lasso, how does it feel? What do you miss most about playing Jamie Tartt?

DUNSTER: There’s been a lot of reflecting. The thing I miss most about it, I suppose, is really knowing a character like that and having the pleasure of knowing a character that is so complicated as that. It was a real treat to turn up to work each day and play that. As actors, it’s a weird thing because regular work doesn’t come around all that often, really, and it certainly hadn’t before I did that. For everybody on the show, getting to turn up, see the same faces, and build those relationships was amazing. That, in and of itself, for me, was great. But Jamie, particularly in Season 3, went on this amazing journey. Having that variety, turning up each day and being like, “Where are we at in his journey? What mood is he in today?,” was a really wonderful thing. Jamie is so cool. I just enjoyed basking in that light of him being cool. I got to ride on his coattails for a little bit.

It was such a special project because no matter what you felt about any particular storyline, the show always felt like a warm hug, which must be hard to say goodbye to.

DUNSTER: Sure. It’s that thing of, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” I love it when people are like, “I watched the finale and I was in tears.” You’re like, “Oh, that’s funny, but that’s the goal.” You want to get them crying.

Have you had conversations with other co-stars about collaborating together?

DUNSTER: We still stay in touch. Up to now, the best collaboration has been our team on FIFA, when we play together on our video game. But we love each other and we stay in touch a lot. It’s a really exciting time for loads of people, like Juno [Temple] in Fargo and Hannah doing everything and Brett [Goldstein] doing his tour. It was so exciting watching Toheeb [Jimoh] play Romeo in the West End. It’s such a joy. It’s been such a wonderful thing. If they turned around tomorrow and said, “There’s gonna be a new one,” great, we’d all do it. But we’re just so pleased and it was such a pleasure to have the time that we did.

Phil Dunster Doesn’t Want to Do More ‘Ted Lasso’ Just For the Sake of It
Image via Apple TV+

When the series ended, fans were waiting for some sort of announcement, whether it was that there would be some other season that could look different, or whether there would be spinoffs, or whether we would never see the characters again. How do you feel about the fact that there hasn’t really been an official word on the future of Ted Lasso? Do you feel closure? Do you still feel hope that something, in some form, could take shape?

DUNSTER: My honest answer to that is really, only if the minds that be – Jason [Sudeikis] and Brendan [Hunt] and Joe Kelly and Bill Lawrence – feel like it would be with integrity. No one would forgive us or them for making something just for the sake of it. There’s enough content. We don’t need any more just for the sake of it. Of course, there are potential things that could happen there. Do I feel closure? Yeah, I kind of do. That doesn’t mean that anything will not happen, at all. That’s just my perception on it because it feels like we culminated that together. Sure, I would love to do more, but again, I would only want them to do it if they felt like it was something that came from the heart and soul. And I think it would. I don’t think that they would do if it wasn’t that, not least because Twitter would lose their collective minds, and then we’d have to live with that and that would probably be a bit of a nightmare.

Were you ever told about any possible story ideas for Jamie that never actually ended up happening, or did all the things that you were told about find their way into the show, even if they had a little bit different shape by the time they got there?

DUNSTER: I don’t have any specific things that didn’t make it in. There were things that they maybe didn’t know which way they wanted to go. I think Jason did know, deep down, where he wanted it to go, but it was a collaborative process in the writers’ room, so it was still up for debate, about the Roy and Jamie and Keeley question of it all and how that culminated. There were a few different options that they had and a few different ways that they could go with that. I think that he was always gonna come back to Richmond, post Man City. But I don’t remember anything specific that didn’t make it in.

Phil Dunster Explains Why He Was a ‘Ted Lasso’ Jamie and Keeley Apologist
Image via Apple TV+

Were you ever rooting for Jamie and Keeley to get back together? Would you have wanted to see what that would look like, or do you think friendship is more important to him now?

DUNSTER: Good question. Obviously, when I was playing it and we were shooting it, I was fully gunning for that because that’s what he wanted. As the actor playing that part, you’ve gotta be the person who can justify all of their decisions and desires, so I was fully a Jamie and Keeley apologist. There is an argument to be made that Jamie learned the most from Keeley, certainly in terms of listening, understanding, and empathizing. Whatever it would be to have Keeley in Jamie’s life is the important thing for him. Having her alongside him, there’ll always be that thing. When someone has known one intimately, you do always feel closer to them, and I think that that’s certainly the case with them. That’s also the case with Jamie and Roy.

At the beginning of the first season, Jamie and Keeley were terrible together because their relationship was so toxic. But by the end of it, I loved Jamie with Keeley, but also still loved Keeley and Roy. Did you ever talk about them just having a throuple?

DUNSTER: I was like, “Maybe Jamie and Roy should just get together.” I don’t know. I think that’s what we all wanted to see. You’re right, most importantly, they were still friends. There’s that lovely scene with the three of them in episode 11, after the game against Man City, where it’s just peaceful and friendship and three people wanting the best for each other.

And none of them trying to kill each other.

DUNSTER: Right, which is good in friendship.

Phil Dunster Said Working with Brett Goldstein Was an Ongoing Collaboration
Image via Apple TV+

One of the things that I love most about the series in general is that it really earned Jamie and Roy spending time together in Amsterdam. They went on such a journey to get to that point, but it was so great to see them get to that place. What was it like to really work with Brett Goldstein on that dynamic that went from antagonist to friends to family? Did you guys have a lot of conversations about how that would develop, or was it always just very natural?

DUNSTER: We did. I had a bit of a cheat code because Jason was often around and Brett, who was a story executive and also was in the writers’ room, was such a great person to bounce ideas off, but also ask questions about the relationship. He was an authority on it, but Brett, as a collaborator, was always someone who was like, “I haven’t got the answer. Let’s find it together.” He is the embodiment of an actor never trying to win the scene, but letting the scene win. That was something that made me just love working with him. You never felt like, “Okay, this is my scene.” There was always something that both characters wanted from it and it was about finding the space to let those moments play out. Yeah, we did speak at length about the journeys of the two characters and the points and moments that they would see eye-to-eye, and those things actually made them a lot closer. They were the opposite side of the same coin, really.

You previously told me that all the stuff you guys shot while you were cycling together was done in one shot. Did you guys rehearse that before, in order to get that timing right, or did you have to just jump in and try to get it right while you were doing it?

DUNSTER: It was a very, very, very cold night. Oh, God, an actor complaining about their work. I’m sure we’ve heard it all before, but it was a very cold night, so we did map it out a few times before shooting it. It took a little bit of getting right. I can only imagine what it was like shooting 1917. They built sets dependent on how long the conversation was. We basically only had so many streetlights that had been set up, so we did rehearse it a few times before rolling.

Did it ever go so wrong that you wondered if you were ever going to get it?

DUNSTER: We were too fast to begin with. Jamie was doing a lot of the talking and I would see that we were getting close to the end of the stretch. It was about just beating it out and making sure that when I’d see a certain tree that we were going past, I needed to be around this point because otherwise we were in trouble. The first couple of times, it took too long. The hardest bit was staying in the same line because when you’re going slightly slower, you’re veering off. No matter how well you know the lines, when it’s that cold, it’s hard to think of anything other than being freezing cold.

It feels like one of those scenes where, if you’re thinking too much about the lines, something else might get screwed up or throw the whole thing off.

DUNSTER: Yeah. Well, nobody fell into the river. At least there’s that. That would have really held up proceedings.

Which Reality Show Could ‘Ted Lasso’s Jamie Tartt Be Successful On?
Image via Apple TV+

Before Jamie experienced any real growth, he went on a reality show that he got voted off of. Now that he’s at this stage in his life, with the growth that he’s been through, if he had to come up with a new reality show for himself to be on, what do you think it would be? Would it be some kind of cooking show? Would it be something about how he’s more in touch with his feelings? What do you think he’d be more suited for now?

DUNSTER: Imagine him on Mastermind. That would be insane. I don’t know what he would do on Mastermind. Bake Off would be funny. Every single week, he’d try to bake a tart and you’d be like, “That’s not really how it works.” He could do something like Who Do You Think You Are?, where you go back through your family history and discover who you’re descended from. That would be quite funny. Maybe he’s got royalty somewhere deep down. He’d be like, “I knew it. I knew I was special.”

During your time on Ted Lasso, you also did The Devil’s Hour. What made you want to be a part of that series?

DUNSTER: It just was a really great script and great concept. It’s different from Ted and Jamie. I love Ted and Jamie, but actors wanna have variety. That felt like a different space. My character in that was still a bit of a douche. He was a real piece of work, and the fun part is always figuring out how you can justify that. The bigger the douche, the more the justification needed for figuring out why they are like that. It was a really great cast and a really interesting concept. I think I just about understood what was going on, by the end. Tom Moran’s script was so intricately rich, in terms of timelines and time-space continuum elements. But also, the show isn’t about that, at all. It’s just the case that those elements are involved in it and you’ll get it. I really liked that. I thought that was very clever.

Did they tell you things ahead of time, or did you have to find out as you read scripts?

DUNSTER: We had three scripts in, when we first started on that. And then, you have the meetings and you find out more from there. There were quite a few conversations, once we started the job, of going, “Okay, what’s going on? How does this all work?”

In general, are you someone who likes to have as much information as possible, or are you someone who likes to only know what your character would know? How do you approach that?

DUNSTER: I think that it’s project dependent. I did a play once where the director would speak to each actor individually because the stories were all so intertwined, but if there was any backstory stuff, we shouldn’t know that because they were strangers to each other. I really enjoyed not knowing who the other characters were. That was really fun. And there was an element with Ted sometimes where we wouldn’t have the next episode until quite close to when we shot and we didn’t know, episodes in advance, what was gonna happen. What happens then is that you’re playing what’s happening right now and what you know to be true. There’s something quite freeing about that when you’re thinking forward to something that’s gonna happen. Generally, I think that knowledge is power and it means that you have a wider understanding of the whole thing.

With the work that you’ve done, when was the most nervous you’ve been walking on set the first day?

DUNSTER: I was really nervous on my first job, which was a gangster film, but purely because I just had no idea what I was doing. It was a rehearsal, and I followed the director. For a camera rehearsal, you basically will just give an offer as to where you’re sitting or standing, and you’ll read the scene out. If you want to go pick something up over there, you show that in the rehearsal, so that the director and cinematographer can go, “Okay, so we’re gonna need to shoot that with this.” I had no idea that was a thing. So, the director was like, “Okay, let’s do a rehearsal,” and I stood behind him. He was like, “Do you wanna step in?” I was like, “Oh, sorry. Yeah, sure.” I just was so afraid of being called out for being a total novice, but I did it. Of course, everybody has that. It would be mad not to have that feeling. I remember I did an episode of Catastrophe for Channel 4, with Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, and I was terrified because I’d seen the first season, and I loved it. I was like, “Oh, my God!” That was early on, as well. I couldn’t feel my face, most of the time we were filming.

Phil Dunster Had a Joyful Experience Writing and Directing the Short Film ‘Idiomatic’
Image via Ramon Christian

You also have a short that you wrote and directed and are in, called Idiomatic. How did that come about? Had you been wanting to take that leap for a while?

DUNSTER: Thank you for mentioning that. No, not really. It hadn’t been a burning desire for that long. It was lockdown year and someone had said the [phrase], “Address the elephant in the room.” I thought, “That’s funny. Imagine if you were somebody who could see the metaphor and no one else could see it.” I just really like puns. I like really silly, pedantic puns. It just stemmed from there. And then, I wrote a couple of scenes around that. I just liked the idea of it, and from there, I started writing it out. I could see it all. I spoke to a friend of mine who’s a producer and he was like, “Yeah, this is great fun.” It was just a good excuse to create and play. I was so fortunate that I got to work with some really great people on it. It just became this really joyful experience, to make something with great people. That’s the thing that I enjoyed the most. It wasn’t this thing of, “I wanna move into directing now.” It was like, “I really enjoyed doing that.” It was really just a wonderful experience to work with great people who loved turning up each morning.

Now that you’ve done it, would you want to do it again? Would you want to turn that short into a full-length feature? Have you thought about where it all goes from here?

DUNSTER: Yes and no. I think that I would do it again if the right thing came along. But also, I’ve seen too many shorts that feel like they’re trying to be something other than just being a short film. Short films, as a medium, are excellent. It’s such a great format of media because it’s like telling a joke, as opposed to telling a story. The punchier it is, the better. That’s not always the case, of course, and who am I to say since I’m not an authority on it. But the short films that I’ve enjoyed watching are the ones that can be distilled down to a one-line joke or a one-line beat. And so, I just really wanted to make a short film that stood as a short film. I think we could extrapolate certain elements of it to find feature-length stuff, but I wanted to make something that was, in and of itself, an enjoyable thing to do and hopefully to watch.

Do you have a plan for where and how people can see it?

DUNSTER: We are doing the film festival circuit at the moment, and then hopefully we can start sharing it out a little bit.

Do you know what you’ll be shooting next?

DUNSTER: I’m still filming. It went on hiatus because of the strike, but I’m filming an Apple TV show, called Surface. We’ve got the rest of [Season 2] to do. I’m really looking forward to getting back because it was a great show to work on. I’m starting the year with that. It’s good. It’s worth coming back for.

Ted Lasso is available to stream on Apple TV+. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Apple TV+