For Ashley Nicole Black, Ted Lasso Has Made Twitter Tolerable

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I can’t think of the last time I looked forward to the reaction that Twitter would have to…well, much of anything. But for newly-Emmy nominated writer Ashley Nicole Black, the promise of seeing how people will react to the forthcoming second season of Ted Lasso (arriving on AppleTV+ July 23rd) gives her hope. “It is kind of one of the rare things that Twitter agreed on, especially during the pandemic when we needed that. So that’s been one of the most fun parts, is seeing people respond to it.”

Black is no stranger to working on shows that elicit strong positive reactions on social media; her work on HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show has been similarly lauded. In fact, when asking about her path to the Ted Lasso writers’ room (which also included stops at Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and ABC’s dearly departed Bless This Mess), I drew a very clear connection to her Ally character from ABLSS – a relentlessly positive coworker who will praise anything and everything about you, even as a building burns down around you. Not only is that an ethos that she’s dedicated herself to bringing out in her work, it’s also the part of Ted Lasso that attracted her most:

I remember talking to Jason about it and being like, I love characters who honestly care about each other, and there are real consequences for behaving poorly. I think a lot of times in comedy, if something is funny, once the audience laughs at it, we just kind of let it go. But in the real world, even if it’s really funny, if you hurt your friend’s feelings you need to apologize. There’s going to be constantly something behind it.

And so, that’s the kind of comedy that I like to do where people are at least trying to be good and care about each other and there are real emotional stakes to all the comedy that happens—and that really drew me to the show.

A character and a show with such heart were, naturally, received warmly by critics and viewers alike (in fact, as I write this, Ted Lasso is receiving an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series). For Black, this embrace felt natural after decades of male protagonists who were, in a word: bad. “I think the time was just very right for a good guy who’s doing his best—which is how most people actually try to live our lives anyway. So it should be more relatable; you know, Ted Lasso should be a little bit more reliable than Walter White. Even though they’re both characters and we love watching all of them we had I think, because like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, were so successful [with] a lot of interesting bad guys. And I think people were hungry for a good guy.”

Turns out, a good guy can be more appealing than even its creators realize. Black mentioned during our conversation that Ted Cruz has tweeted about enjoying Ted Lasso, an attribution that I admitted to being baffled by. But Black has a good explanation for that too: “I think there’s a lot in the show about the idea of what makes one an American, you know, because Ted is a fish out of water. And we joke around a lot about other countries’ negative perceptions of us as like bad American tourists [..] what I like about Ted is that he also has a lot of really good American qualities.”

Those qualities are set to help a wider range of the cast this season. In addition to helping Roy navigate retirement and helping Nathan adjust to his new role with UFC Richmond, the show’s core ethos of mentorship, curiosity, and righteousness will result in new storylines for some other players we’ve only gotten to know a little bit at the moment. And Black is confident that, even though that urgent sense of comfort that UFC Richmond brought us last year is a little less urgent this time around, the team (and its associated characters) are still as lovable as ever. “I look forward to people watching it, I look forward to people tweeting at us. That’s one of the most fun parts of working on this show, so, I can’t wait for people to see it. I hope everybody loves it as much as I love getting to do it.”

Ted Lasso Season Two Debuts July 23rd exclusively on AppleTV+.

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Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.
Amma Marfo
Amma Marfo
Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.