At the end of Ted Lasso Season Two, every fan of the series had a new nemesis: Nate (Nick Mohammed). The shocking finale, which saw the character leave A.F.C Richmond and tear up Ted’s (Jason Sudeikis) “BELIEVE” sign, left us all bloody well stunned — and low-key dreading what Nate would be like in Ted Lasso Season Three.
It was such a 180 from the meek, bumbling character we’d become attached to from Ted Lasso Season One and we all felt a little betrayed. And things got a little heated online — even over on PEDESTRIAN.TV, where our finale recap was simply entitled Fuck You Nate, So Hard.
Recently we caught up with Nick Mohammed to talk about all things Ted Lasso Season Three, and we can confirm he is as angelic as the OG Nate (no villain era IRL). He recalled people only said “fuck you” on social media (not on the street), but he kind of… got it.
“It’s correct. People should be like ‘fuck you’,” Mohammed said in a Zoom chat with PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“He did something really, really cruel and vindictive, after all that Ted had done for him. It’s absolutely right that people should be hating on Nate. I personally don’t condone what he did — if it was me, I wouldn’t have done that. I’ve had to try and find a reason for why Nate did [it]. But yeah, people were outraged and rightly so!”
The villain arc was so subtle and so cleverly done that it had most fans feeling extra betrayed. As nice as Mohammed is in real life, he got a kick out of portraying Nate’s descent into A-grade dickhead.
“It’s really fun, to be honest. I mean, it was challenging,” Mohammed told us.
“The Season One Nate is more like me… the sort of bumbling, slightly socially awkward thing. I felt like I found my groove in terms of playing that part. And then obviously in the latter half of Season Two, there were certainly less opportunities for Nate to do that.
“It was actually replaced with more emotionally-driven storylines with less space for comedy. It was far more about that fall from grace and downward spiral and pacing that enough so that a starker contrast was still believable.”
Ted Lasso fans are all dying to know whether there’s a redemption arc in store for the character we used to love. Nick Mohammed was obviously not able to reveal all about Ted Lasso Season Three during our convo — and I didn’t want him to! — but he did touch on the whole redemption idea.
“A lot of people obviously want to know if there’s a redemption arc coming, and I can’t really comment on that,” he said.
“Partly because I feel like it’s not even my place to say, because I think the onus is on the viewer and the audience to make up their mind. For some people, what Nate did — he overstepped the mark and what he did was too much, and you can’t rewrite history.”
“He did do what he did. And he decided to do that for whatever reason. And for some people, whatever he does to potentially redeem himself would never be enough anyway. So I don’t know if it’s really up to him, or even the writers, to redeem Nate — it’s up to the audience to take what they can from it.”
People feel really strongly about this show — and that’s probably why viewers felt so let down by Nate’s behaviour in Ted Lasso Season Two. Mohammed reckons the series popped off because it arrived just when we all needed it.
“Season One [came] out during a pandemic, obviously, when people were going to be really receptive to the underlying messages within the show, the core themes of optimism and hope and kindness. It resonated with people at a time when they really could do with that,” Mohammed said.
“And separate to that, the show manages to deliver well comedically, but from emotional storytelling and dramatic storytelling — you can find yourself watching a scene from Ted Lasso and you’re laughing but you’re also crying and you’re also hurt.
“It’s just testament to the writing. I just think that they’ve given the characters so many layers that we do feel that we know them and we can relate to them because they feel like real human beings.
“They don’t feel like characters that you expect to see on television, they feel a lot more nuanced than that. We feel an affinity to them and we want to be like them, or talk to them, or be friends with them, you know.”
As for what we can expect from Ted Lasso Season Three, the first look image featured Nate and Ted facing off with the dastardly Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head) in the background.
So we know there’s still beef between those two — the question is, is Nate full villain or will we see shades of the endearing character we met in Season One?
“It’s not even one thing or the other, it’s more nuanced than that because it’s Ted Lasso, so it sometimes poses more questions than it answers — but in a really fulfilling way. It’s another roller coaster for Nate. It’s not plain sailing. And I look forward to seeing it,” he told us.
Us too, Nick. Us too. Those claims that Ted Lasso Season Three is the last season better not be true.
Ted Lasso Season Three premieres this Wednesday on Apple TV+.
