Interview: In season 3 of ‘Ted Lasso,’ Phil Dunster is stepping up to the head of the class

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“I can’t say on here because it’s too steamy and sexy…”

Let’s rewind a bit. Phil Dunster was born in 1992 in Northampton, United Kingdom…ok, maybe that’s too far. Most will recognize Dunster as Ted Lasso‘s resident bad boy Jamie Tartt. And rightfully so, the two-time Emmy-winning Best Comedy Series from AppleTV+ has been zeitgeist television for the last three years, turning the simple word ‘Believe’ into a mantra.

It’s not always easy for someone in a large ensemble to stand out, especially in a field of personalities like Roy Kent (played by two-time Emmy winner Brett Goldstein) or Keeley Jones (played by Emmy nominee Juno Temple) and even more so when you’re a part of this complicated love triangle. But for Dunster’s Tartt, it’s been increasingly less about standing out and more about standing up; for his team, for his ex and for his friends. The journey of Jamie Tartt began in the show’s first season as AFC Richmond’s cocky himbo who was only in it for himself. As the show itself weaves personal traumas in and around football matches, Tartt’s own back story slowly began to reveal itself and his rivalry with Roy began to flourish and his relationship with Keeley began to crumble (sending her to Roy, no less). In season 3, which may or may not be the show’s final season in this iteration, Tartt finds himself in a position not of self-serving power (a new player threatens his status and everyone else’s) but one of stepping up to bring his team together and in the process cementing his friendship with Roy in the Amsterdam-set episode “Sunflowers” that are among the best moments in Dunster’s career.

Outside of Ted Lasso, Dunster was recently seen in Amazon’s six-part series The Devil’s Hour, where he will reprise his role in the upcoming second season. And it was just announced that he will be joining the cast of the Apple TV+ series Surface for the second season opposite Gugu Mbatha-Raw. He also produced and starred in the short film Pragma, which he made with his partner, filmmaker Eleanor “Ellie” Heydon, which had its international premiere at the TriBeCa Film Festival and is currently writing his next project which he describes as somewhere between 500 Days of Summer, Uncut Gems and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I talked with Phil Dunster this week about the trajectory of Jamie and what his future looks like, some of his early influences, fashion, and what was “too steamy and sexy” to talk about.

Phil Dunster: Hi, man. How you doing, Erik?

Erik Anderson: I’m very well. How are you doing today?

PD: I’m good. I’m pretty good.

[Noticing Dunster is wearing a blue and white striped shirt]

EA: I almost wore a blue striped shirt. I was this close.

PD: That would’ve been awkward.

EA: It would’ve been, or perfect.

PD: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. I’m imagining it instead.

EA: Thank you so much for being here. I’m a really big fan of your work in Man in the Orange Shirt, and Catherine the Great, and Humans. I loved that show. I miss that show.

PD: Oh, great. Oh, wow. That’s back catalog there. That’s serious canon.

EA: Oh yeah, big fan of it.

PD: Yeah. It’s good.

EA: When you were younger, were there actors or movies or shows that inspired you before you became an actor?

PD: Great question. Thank you for asking me that. The show that first I was like, “Oh, this is a thing that people create and it’s an art form,” if I can be so highfalutin as that, was Spaced. It was Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Well, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg created it, and then Jessica Hynes and Nick Frost were involved with that.

That was the start of that trilogy that they went on to Shaun of the Dead, which is my favorite film of all time. Then it was Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. That was, I remember I had broken up with a girlfriend when I was 16, so obviously was heartbroken, and spent a week in the lake district watching that and I had this sort of moment of this like, “This is how you create art.” And then was like, “Oh, it’s just a TV show, but it’s great.” It’s much like Ted Lasso in episode six when he’s got this sort of hallucination going on.

Simon Pegg as a comedic actor I think he’s one of the greats. Imelda Staunton, I always thought that she was absolutely wonderful. I think she’s incredible. Children of Men was also one of those where Alfonso Cuarón created this incredible world, this incredible world on screen, and I always remember thinking, inhabiting that would be, it’s like joining someone else’s imagination. I think, again, there’s a lot of highfalutin going on here, but yeah. I think that that was just knowing that that was possible was pretty cool.

EA: I like that. That’s such a wide range between Children of Men and Shaun of the Dead. That’s fantastic.

PD: Yeah. I’ve got to give one that sounds a bit highbrow. Yeah. (laughs)

EA: On Ted Lasso, Jamie Tartt’s journey from being an antagonist to team player has been so compelling. How do you feel about where Jamie started and where he is now?

PD: The thing I suppose I really hope is there’s some sort of umbilical cord from season one to season three. We can see Jamie having learned his lessons throughout season one and deciding when to, or maybe not even deciding, just learning when to impose those lessons or when to enact the skills that he’s learned from those lessons taught to him by Keeley.

I think Keeley is a huge part of Jamie’s story, not just the romantic side, but she kind of teaches him a lot about forgiveness, and forgiveness of oneself, but also taking responsibility, introspection. And I think there’s such a huge level of emotional growth for Jamie in that.

But I think that we also see, there’s moments from season one with Dani for example in “Two Aces” when Dani turns up and Jamie feels like he needs to beat Dani to show he’s brilliant. And then when Zava turns up in season three, he thinks that he needs to integrate him into the team so that the team is better. And it’s a really nice sort of barometer of Jamie’s journey, but also the impact that Ted Lasso is having on these young men, and to be getting to do a little bit of that, to be getting to show a little bit of that progression as a whole, it’s been such a joy.

EA: You don’t shy away from the negative and really narcissistic elements of Jamie too that overwhelmed him so much in the first two seasons. What’s your headspace for taking that on and still finding a way to make him understandable, if not always sympathetic?

PD: Thank you. I suppose I think that we all have those sort of darker thoughts, darker moments in our life and times that we have acted and look back and go, “I don’t feel proud of myself,” but you at least look back and you go, “Well, I understand why I did it because I was acting out of pain or acting out of pride, and it’s an ugly thing.” But if you have that level of introspection, I suppose you can take that responsibility for it and then hopefully next time you can do it better.

And I think that with Jamie, he has so many of those moments when he acts in a way that perhaps I was going from an external perspective, he’s going to look back on that later and feel bad about it, but there in the moment he doesn’t have that perspective. And so he’s acting from a place that I’ve got to imagine, is it hurt? Is it because of his dad? Is it because in a moment like this previously he was rejected by somebody? And using that imagination and trying to specify what bit of that works with this moment.

And I think that it’s just having the safety of knowing that I just trust Jason and I just trust, oftentimes in season three my scene partner Brett, he’d probably be making fart jokes in between takes, but that’s probably adds to the trust a little bit. And knowing that if I’m in the right ballpark, then they probably won’t say anything. You know what I mean?

EA: Yeah.

PD: If I’m way off, I just know that they would hopefully put me back on track. So yeah, I feel like using my imagination a little bit, I spend so much time daydreaming anyway in my life, so I’ve got to put it to some use.

EA: You mentioned Brett and episode six, which it’s the evolution of your relationship, the relationship between Jamie and Roy might be the best thing in the show. And after the end of season two with Jamie’s father and then the episode “Sunflowers,” really kind of highlighted that journey for them. What was that episode like to shoot? Because it’s really outside of the scope of so many of the episodes.

PD: Yeah. I think that we saw in “Beard All Night” in season two, I think that Jason and Joe and Brendan and the whole writer’s room who really, if there is any success in the show it’s because of them really, they enjoy that space of having… Technically, I don’t think it’s a bottle episode, but there is an element to it where we are extracted from the normal run of things.

It felt like a work holiday kind of thing. And to be able to do that in Amsterdam, I’d never been before, but man, that place is beautiful, absolutely incredible. And I think really, it just helps you with your imagination when you are in a different place and you’re not doing it in a studio necessarily, although Paul Cripps, the designer, is so good, but there’s nothing that compares to actually being there yourself.

And it just meant that… I don’t know. I remembered when my uncle and auntie had a farm, ‘Ee-I-Ee-I-Oh,’ and we would go there every summer. And I always remember now when I go back when I’m older, I have this sort of Proustian set. I go back to that feeling of turning up and then stepping in sheep shit or whatever it was, the smells and whatever. And I just was like, “I want Jamie to have that same sort of Proustian response from when he goes to Amsterdam and is like, “Ah.” This weight is lifted, before all of the pressure of football, before all of the sort of lowercase T trauma in his life started to impact him in the way that it did, I wanted him to have that freedom.

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And Jason, I just love it. They’re on the run. They’re literally just jogging along. It’s so silly. I just love those sorts of silly moments which sort of not undermine but play against the sort of seriousness of what he then goes on to say in the speech with Roy when he is cycling along about when he was first there. So yeah, it just helps the juices flow, being in the actual space itself.

EA: Yeah. And you and Brett seem to really just get on like gangbusters on set and in between takes. And what do you think you’ve learned from him, not just as a scene partner, but as a producer and writer of the show, and what do you think he’s learned from you?

PD: Oh, well, wow. He’s learned probably some skills on FIFA. He scored a couple of goals against me now, so clearly something’s working. I think I’ve probably taught him a couple of dance moves. He was bereft of quite a few dance moves, so we did a lot of work on that.

But I think that he’s an incredibly, I mean, listen, he is a monster when it comes to his workload. He would shoot for a whole day with Ted, and he would be there, he would be on it, have ideas, he’d be offering vibe and good energy to that, and then he goes home, and he would get into the writer’s room for shrinking all day. And I just don’t know how he did it.

And I think that somewhere between me being a lazy boy and watching Brett, I’m like, “Oh, I think that there is…” Because also, Brett once said, he was like, “Just being an actor, you don’t have choice. It’s so unempowering at times to just be an actor because you have to wait for other people.”

And I remember him talking about writing or talking about creating, and I think I really learned that from him that there are many different ways to tell stories, to be able to, I don’t know, at the end of the day if you make something you can probably put yourself in it kind of thing, which is not what Brett does really, but there’s so much more scope to creating things. And yeah, I guess I learnt that amongst many other things. And things that I can’t say on here because it’s too steamy and sexy, I imagine, it’s probably for… Actually, the poster you-

[Dunster points to the poster of Brokeback Mountain on the wall behind me]

EA: I’m okay with it. Keep going.

PD: The poster that you’ve got in the back, just imagine that, that’s largely what it was.

EA: Perfect, I’ll just be thinking about that now. (both laugh)

Another great element of this season is Jamie entering his coaching era. There are those little moments where he steps up in a way that is so different than he’s done before. If this really is the final season-

PD: Which we don’t know.

EA: Which we don’t know.

PD: Hands up.

EA: What does his future look like to you? What does Jamie’s future look like?

PD: Wow, that’s interesting. I think that he’s had a dalliance with extracurricular activities, i.e., dating shows, reality TV, and I think that that came from a place of pride, it came from a place of fear. And I think that he’s now learned, I mean, I’m sure that he’s got that that’s part of everybody really, but I think for Jamie that’s a big part of what made him.

But I think that yeah, it probably feels like it’s an obvious thing to say that he would go on and coach. I don’t know if he would feel like… Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like there’s maybe some more… In the rosy version of events, he probably goes on to be an ambassador of a charity somewhere, football charity, because he knows what it’s like to come from a certain background and go through a lot of hardships, and which is something that we actually go into later on in the season. We learn a bit more about Jamie’s sort of backstory.

So yeah, maybe there’s that, but probably, I don’t know. He’ll probably see David Gandy, the supermodel, bring out his own clothes range and he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll probably do that. Yeah, yeah, probably do that.” Got style. He’s a fashionable boy. Maybe it’s fashion. I feel like maybe, “Beckham’s doing it. Beckham’s doing it.” He’ll just follow that.

EA: That is an absolutely perfect segue to what I was going to ask you next, because I wanted to talk to you about fashion because you’re kind of like a king of looks for the show with red carpet, photo shoots and award shows, and I wanted to ask what some of your favorite looks were from them. I loved the Berluti suit at SAG, and-

PD: Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. Oh, wow. That’s cool. Yeah, I think I had a look when I went to the Emmys the first time, and I think I was nervous to do it because Brett kind of has cornered the market of only wearing black everything. Everything is not a shade lighter than black. And it was an all-white, it was a Brioni sort of polo neck.

But I’m going to sort of underline all of this with I don’t know, I don’t know any of this stuff, but there are people who, I can’t be trusted to dress myself, so some very, very clever people with a lot of style helped me with it. And that I really love because I think the bits that I love, I’m very different to Jamie in many ways, footballing abilities being the main one.

But I really enjoy quite a sort of classic look, I guess, if I was to be so bold as to say that I have a look that I enjoy. I just like quite clean sort of suit moments. Moments, there you go. That’s the word that’s used in the fraternity. But certainly, that one was a really special one.

And yeah, I’ve been working with Warren Baker a bit here in LA and James Yardley back in the UK, and they both have such a brilliant way of making me feel like I’ve dressed myself but on a really good day, and also swallowed a fashion magazine or two.

And so yeah, I think the looks that I like most are the ones where it just feels like… I really like a good classic British gentleman look. In fact, Tom Sweeney who I met, was very fortunate to meet, I’m sure this is very relatable, I’m sure, very fortunate to meet him and his team, and I wore one of his suits to meet the president and that felt like a really nice British designer, very sleek, sharp look, which I loved and felt like it was a good representation of the motherland.

EA: The show has pretty obviously had a profound effect on a lot of people. How has it changed you personally over these three seasons?

PD: That’s interesting. Yeah. I think that there has been a huge step for me in terms of thinking about how things are made, watching someone like Jason, this show that lives in his bones, how he has been a leader on the show, how there are people who learning from, I guess, from Ted Lasso, but again, I think Ted Lasso is a big part of who Jason is.

I think that it’s learning how to sort of delegate in a position of leadership and I think empowering people around him. I think I hope that if ever I am in a position of power or a position or of leadership, I suppose, is the right term, figuring out ways to use those sorts of lessons, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose.

And also getting to go to more football games, really. That’s the main things. I’ve been invited to more football games, that’s the thing I’ve taken away from it most.

EA: Love it. I love it. Phil, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

PD: What a treat. What a lovely conversation. Thank you very much, Erik.

EA: Wonderful. Have a beautiful day.

PD: Bye, mate. Bye-bye.

The third season of Ted Lasso is currently streaming weekly only on AppleTV+.