Joe Kelly is an American Award winning producer, writer, screenwriter, director, actor, and co-creator of the Apple TV+ series, Ted Lasso.
History[]
Like his fellow co-creator, Jason Sudekis, Kelly is an alumnus of the Saturday Night Live writing staff in the first two decades of the 21st century. In 2013, he was a part of the writing staff who was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special.
Amongst his other credits, he was also a writer and story editor on How I Met Your Mother, mainly between seasons 3 and 5 in the late 2000s.
Ted Lasso[]
Joe Kelly and Brendan Hunt have known each other and Jason Sudeikis for more than 20 years. NBC Sports needed a buzzy ad campaign to promote soccer's English Premier League in the U.S. So they called Sudeikis, who was finishing-up a ten-year run on Saturday Night Live. He said the job sounded like fun, especially when he was allowed to invite two old friends along for the ride.
Sudeikis plays the American football coach hired to be the new head coach of the Tottenham Hotspurs soccer team. And just like in the show, he doesn’t know anything about soccer. Basically, it’s a perfect caricature of someone who knows everything about American football but nothing about the football the rest of the globes adores.
After the Ted Lasso commercials, the trio developed Ted Lasso into a more complete character who shed his arrogant swagger for humble curiosity. In the show, Ted Lasso also deals with divorce and mental health challenges. All while bringing a feminine approach to a typically masculine job.
The three friends got a boost when veteran television producer Bill Lawrence joined the project.
When asked whether the show has more freedom because it's on Apple TV+, Kelly answered:
"We went into filming feeling like the underdogs that Richmond were. Like, we weren't coming on the heels of a bidding war. We weren't coming on the heels of, like, "Here we go with this monster show." And I felt like it helped the-- the process, the tone, the feeling, the vibe, everything."
External link[]
- Joe Kelly at IMDb