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Brendan Hunt is an American Award winning actor, a television actor, a stage and theater actor, a film actor, a comedian, a writer, a screenwriter, a showrunner plus co-creator, a producer, and the main regular actor featured in the Apple TV+ series, Ted Lasso who played the character Coach Beard, who is the best friend of the titular character Ted Lasso, the coach of AFC Richmond, and the husband of Jane Payne.

Along with actor, producer, and creator Jason Sudeikis, he is also the co-creator of Ted Lasso (TV series).

History[]

Brendan Hunt was born and raised in the Chicago, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was around two years old. His mother struggled to raise him and his sister as a single parent and they spent some time living with their grandmother.

In 1996, he completed the theater program at Illinois State University. While there, he performed at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and completed a week-long master class under the guidance of actress Judith Ivey.

Careers and Awards[]

After getting his theater degree, he studied with The Second City in Chicago before heading to Amsterdam and joining the Boom Chicago comedy troupe. From 1998 to 2008, he was a regular writer and performer with the Boom Chicago comedy and improvisational troupe.

He was the head writer and featured in the Comedy Central (Netherlands) satirical news program Comedy Central News (CCN) that was produced by Boom Chicago. While with the group, he performed alongside Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses, We're the Millers, Saturday Night Live), Jordan Peele (Key and Peele) and Seth Meyers (Late Night with Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live).

While Boom Chicago was based in Amsterdam, they embarked on a "comedy exchange" with The Second City performing at their Chicago, Illinois theater in 2003. The Chicago Tribune noted Hunt's performance as soccer star Roy Keane, calling it the "best character of the night." While with Boom, Hunt co-wrote and co-starred in a pair of two-man shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Iconic Yanks with Meyers and Here Comes the Neighborhood with Peele.

Europe Based and Theater Troupe[]

After returning to the United States, Hunt developed a one-man show based on his time in the Netherlands called Five Years in Amsterdam. In the performance, Hunt takes a comedic and touching look back at five years living in Europe as an American. Among topics examined are relationships, drug excesses, experiences at a fetish club and his feelings about the Match of the Day anthem and Alan Hansen. He also recounts a rough childhood with "an absent father" and an alcoholic mother.

In 2007, Hunt joined the Sacred Fools Theater Company. Hunt's time at Sacred Fools included a turn as the lead in the musical Savin' Up for Saturday Night that proved to be an Ovation Awards-winning role. Hunt won Lead Actor in a Musical at the 2010 Ovation Awards.

In 2013, Hunt wrote and was the lead actor in a dark comedy parody of the Charlie Brown Peanuts comic strip called Absolutely Filthy. The play has won multiple awards in both Los Angeles and New York.

The play has received overwhelmingly favorable reviews, with The New York Observer saying it creates an "endorphin high that accompanies laughing until your eyes water." The LA Weekly gave accolades for Hunt's performance, saying he "steals the show.".

Hunt and the play also won several awards. The 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival named Absolutely Filthy as "Top of the Fringe" and Best Comedy. At the 2014 FringeNYC, the play won three awards that included an acting award for Hunt as well as prizes for overall play and TheaterMania audience favorite. Hunt was nominated in four categories in the 2014 LA Weekly Theater Awards, winning the top prize in the categories of Best Male Performance and Comedy Ensemble.

At the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival, Hunt debuted the one-man play Still Got It. In the show, Hunt plays a person reeling from making a bad toast at his friend’s wedding. Hunt’s performance was honored for top Solo Performance at the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival Awards.

Film and TV[]

After roles in episodes of the television series Reno 911!, Parks and Recreation, Community and How I Met Your Mother, Hunt made his major motion picture debut as the "Sketchy Dude" in 2013's We're the Millers, which featured his Boom Chicago castmate Jason Sudeikis. Hunt had a role in another Sudeikis vehicle, 2014's Horrible Bosses 2, playing a sex addiction group member.

An Emmy Award nomination was among the accomplishments for Hunt as a regular performer on the Comedy Central series Key & Peele. Along with appearing in several sketches, Hunt was nominated at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special. The nomination, with Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele and Rich Talarico, was for the Key & Peele Super Bowl Special.

Hunt's most high-profile acting job before Ted Lasso may well have been the character of "Frank", a recurring character in the ABC comedy, Bless This Mess. He has had occasional roles in Adam Ruins Everything and Key and Peele, as well as a minor role in Sudekis' Horrible Bosses 2.

Ted Lasso[]

In 2013, Hunt co-wrote a Premier League advertising campaign for NBC Sports featuring himself as an assistant coach to Tottenham Hotspur F.C. with Jason Sudeikis. Sudeikis told GQ magazine that the two drew off their years in Amsterdam playing FIFA together before and after shows. The commercials were named as the second-best TV soccer sketch by Paste with the magazine saying, "Brilliant though Sudeikis is, the unsung hero of these sketches is Brendan Hunt." The campaign received a Bronze award at the 2014 Sports Clio Awards.

In about 2015, Sudekis' then-girlfriend Olivia Wilde suggested that he revisit the character, perhaps in a story in which Lasso found his career direction change. Whereas the original Lasso was more broadly comic, and as Sudeikis described him, "belligerent", he decided to make Lasso more sympathetic for the television series.

The series was commissioned in October 2019 by Apple TV+, with Sudeikis reprising the role. Television producer and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence was brought in to work on a television series based around the character in 2017. The series is co-owned by Warner Bros. Television, where Lawrence's production company Doozer is based, and which controls linear distribution rights to the series, and NBC subsidiary Universal Television, which is a "passive partner".

Actors in the series Brett Goldstein and Brendan Hunt also joined the writing team along with Sudeikis as the second and third members of the main cast to do so. While Hunt and Sudeikis were part of both the cast and writing team from the start, Goldstein was initially a writer and story editor. It was only after sending a video audition of some already written Roy Kent scenes to the showrunner, Bill Lawrence, that led to Goldstein's casting.

The episodes "Carol of the Bells" and "Beard After Hours" were the two episodes developed when the second season was expanded by two episodes, fitting in to the continuity of the second season without impacting storylines of the already written episodes.

He was also nominated for four Emmys himself. Two for writing, one for Outstanding Series, and finally Best Supporting Actor for his role as Coach Beard.

White House Visit[]

Ted-lasso-white-house

When the Ted Lasso cast got invited to visit the White House, he and co-stars Jason Sudeikis, Toheeb Jimoh, Brett Goldstein, and Hannah Waddingham made an appearance during a press briefing, where Sudeikis spoke about mental health and co-star James Lance made a fun cameo as fictional Independent reporter Trent Crimm.

They spoke briefly on the importance of fighting the stigma that’s often associated with seeking help for mental health problems — a theme of the show. Jason Sudeikis encouraged everyone to make sure to check in regularly with family, friends and neighbors who may be struggling and ask how they’re doing. The show's been widely praised for dealing with topics not always seen in comedies - like mental health, racism and homophobia.

Some critics have suggested it's taken that too far - with episodes creeping up from 30 minutes to over an hour and being too dedicated to solving these issues. But Phil thinks it's been important to tackle the issues in a way "that doesn't feel preachy".

After the briefing, Sudeikis and his castmates met behind closed doors with President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, according to the White House. The White House on Monday touted Biden’s designation of nearly $500 million to increase capacity for the national suicide hotline and to help connect local callers with local responders. In 2020, Congress approved transitioning the 10-digit suicide hotline to three simple numbers — 988.

Personal Life[]

The soccer theme in Ted Lasso isn’t something that he got into strictly for the show. He is actually a soccer fan in real life. Although he didn’t grow up with any interest in the sport, he started to follow it when he moved to Amsterdam during the 1990s. Now the sport has become a major part of his life. He enjoys reading during his free time and he occasionally keeps his social media followers in the loop with what he’s reading.

Hunt is married to actress and producer Shannon Nelson, who has appeared in Drop Dead Gorgeous and Alice And The Monster. The couple keep details of their married life out of the media, but both are pretty comfortable sharing photos of their time together as a family. Especially since becoming parents.

Hunt keeps his private life out of his interviews about his hit show Ted Lasso for the most part. But back in May, when he and wife Shannon Nelson were trying to get home, he actually broke his seal of Coach Beard-like silence to get his baby boy back into the United States after filming in the United Kingdom. “Dear Biden Administration,” he wrote on Twitter. “Please make it easier for Americans who have a baby while working abroad to get formal US citizenship for said baby so they can get a passport and be allowed to go to the US. Love, An American dad whose 14 week-old son currently can't leave the UK.”

External link[]

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