Key members of Ted Lasso’s sound team discuss their craft, Ted Lasso's behind-the-scenes companionship, and how much work goes into an episode.

Although a Ted Lasso season 3 release date has not yet been revealed, the Apple TV+ show is arguably still riding high on its stellar second season. Developed by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, Ted Lasso brought an all-too-rare jolt of heart and optimism to an otherwise bleak landscape when the series first debuted in 2020. Ted Lasso season 2 continued to deliver and expanded the scope and means of its storytelling methods, propelling the show even further into the hearts and minds of its viewers.

Of course, for each obvious reason that Ted Lasso excels, there is action behind the scenes just as important as the fantastic performances and snappy direction. Key members of Ted Lasso's hardworking sound department spoke with Screen Rant to describe how much work goes into each episode of the show, shining light on just how deliberate the end result is.

Related: Ted Lasso: Why Nate’s Hair Is Fully Gray At The End Of Season 2

See Screen Rant's conversation with Supervising Sound Editor Brent Findley, Co-Supervising Sound Editor and Dialogue Editor Bernard Weiser, and Foley Artist Sanaa Kelley.

Screen Rant: First off, can you quickly describe what your workflow process is, and how all of your individual responsibilities combine in an episode?

Brent Findley: Sure. So the process for, let's just say for one episode, would be that there's a sound team, whether myself or other members of the team with me... [we] get together with Jason Sudeikis and other producers and writers and picture editors, and go through an episode beginning to end, and discuss each scene.

When the sound needs to help to tell the story or the scene, or get out of the way to help the story be told, what improvements and technical things need to be fixed, and then what creative and design functions that we need to contribute to help drive the story. We discuss music in the sense that, you know, music is very much in our show and drives the emotion of the scenes. So, we have our music editor and composer on, and discuss how that music is going to be doing some of that lifting, and whether we need sound design to do some of that lifting, and how they'll play together.

Bernard Weiser: Can I jump in? One quick thing with that too is that it's an opportunity, because this is important to Ted Lasso, it's an opportunity to make suggestions as well. And what's special about the show is, everybody is open and collaborative to listen to suggestions. Now, Jason might knock it down right away, or might go "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine." But it's open for discussion like that, it's very much a collaborative effort.

Brent Findley: Yeah. Thank you, Bernard; that is absolutely true. Anybody at any point can say "Oh, I've got an idea for how this could go, or how this could go," and all ideas are listened to and on the table. And at that point, we all kind of take our notes and go into our specific areas of expertise. Throughout the process of a week, or two weeks, depending on how much time we have with an episode, we then reconvene, bring all of our components together, come to the mixing stage, spend a few days getting the balance of everything mixed in correctly, get the final music in, and seeing how everything sits well.

Then we get Jason and Brendan and all the writers and producers and directors and everybody back in at the end to see how we did and see where we can tweak it and massage it. And again, it's another point Bernard said. Even to the very end, all ideas are on the table. As I say, everybody gets into the pool at the end. Ideas show up that maybe we didn't have along the way, but now once all the components are together, we can explore different ways to bring those parts together, and it's just a really fun process.

Screen Rant: I love that you said that, Bernard, about everyone being open to suggestions. It feels very in the spirit of the show. Is that unique to Ted Lasso, and not typically how this kind of thing works?

Bernard Weiser: It kind of is, especially to this degree. It makes this a very special show, and I think it's wonderful that the show is so popular. People are in love with the characters in the show, and it shows that the crew is also in love with the show. And more importantly, for all of us, is we really like each other, respect each other's work, and it's just a chemistry that really works and that really makes it special. And the fact that the collaboration is from top-down is a special experience.

It takes a certain group... like I say, the chemistry, and people that just fit together, and it doesn't always happen that way. And that's okay, because often times a lot of great shows happen, and not everybody's gelling in the same way. But boy, when it does, it is a lot of fun. Creatively fun, and we really enjoy the show and each other.

Screen Rant: Have you all been there since season one as well?

Bernard Weiser: Yep. Oh, when you get this feel like this, you latch on. You're going with this. The more you've been in this industry, this type of atmosphere means more and more to you.

Screen Rant: How did you all find your way into what you're doing? Were you young and thinking "One day I want to edit sound?" or "One day I want to create effects"? 

Bernard Weiser: Well, I like to say a bad childhood started it for me. But yeah, for me, I was into photography and such. When I was like six years old, my dad stuck a, literally a [Kodak] Brownie camera, a little tiny plastic box of a camera, into my hands, and I just fell in love with photography and such. And actually, I went through school, I was a photographer for a long time, and kind of a natural extension was going into motion pictures and such.

But because of that, when I went through school, most people thought "Go into cinematography," but I loved puzzles, it drew me into editing, and I was a picture editor for a while. But, you know, it's interesting, this whole industry for all of us, when you ask that question of how did we all get into this business, you will get a unique answer every time. So many things go into our journey in this industry. It's always an interesting story, and always a great question.

By extension, I got into post-production, and the way my path went, I started going toward sound. I started doing sound as well, and then I really liked the people in sound, and it was a period in time where I had to make that decision, where things in picture were very very aggressive, and it turned out I had a talent for sound, and that's what drew me in. And, like all of us, this is just a big adventure. It keeps going.

Sanaa Kelley: I never knew there was even post[-production]. I thought you record a movie and you just use it, that's it, it's done. So, it was like twenty-seven years ago, I walked into a stage, and I saw a Foley artist working. He had doorknobs, he was using it for gun movement, and just a suitcase filled with junk, and I'm like "What are you doing, are you crazy?" And then he explained. "This is Foley. You replace all the sound." And I'm like "Wait. You mean the actors don't really speak all the languages?" he's like "Yeah, you've got to dub it," and I'm like "Oh my gosh."

I'm like, "You know what? I think I can do it. I'm an overachiever, I started walking when I was like one, so I got this." He puts me in front of the mic and is like, "Okay, walk." I kept walking forward, I couldn't do the heel-toe, it was a lot harder than anything. So, then he's like "You know what? It's okay, because some people have it, some people don't. You just don't have it." And I'm like "Oh. Okay. Challenge accepted."

I picked up the yellow pages, I went through every studio. I called, I said "Hey, I make really good coffee, and I can sweep like no other. I'll come, I'll sweep, I'll organize, make coffee, just let me sit in," and after a gazillion 'no's, I got one 'yes'. So I went in, and the Foley artist wouldn't let me sit in with them. They closed the doors, and closed the blinds, but the Foley mixer let me sit in with him, which was the best thing they could have done for me. I learned to hear the communication between the mixer and the Foley artist, and I could [understand] "Okay, this is what he's going for." And then once they'd leave, I would say "Oh, I'll clean up, put the props away," which was great because they left all the props.

I had a chance to go close my eyes and try to replicate the sound. "Oh, this was what they must have used." So, one time they got a really low-budget movie which is no payment, and they said "Would you like to do it?" and I said, "Yes, please!" So after I did my first one, I started getting hired for everything. But it was a lot of hard work. It's not as easy as it looks. So that's how I got into sound.

Brent Findley: Yeah, and it's a testament to Sanaa and her team and their talent that, you know, I'll try to get her onto the shows that I'm working on. [Get] her team on, because their material is so right in the pocket, and it's so easy to mix in, and it sounds so real and authentic. The performance is great.

That's something I think that Foley really brings to the table, is it's a performed art. It is not just pulling pre-existing sounds from a library and trying to make them work to picture, which is another method of doing things, but I feel like that extra layer that performance brings just helps it match what the actors are doing. Because actors are performing also, so let's perform their sounds along with them, and I think that's the extra layer that elevates the whole soundtrack.

Screen Rant: Sanaa, in watching your TikTok videos... it's like you're acting, basically. You always have eyes on the screen and you're trying to replicate everything. How much Foley do you do for one typical episode of Ted Lasso?

Sanaa Kelley: That's a really good question. I get asked that a lot. "What scenes do you have to do?" The answer is, everything. We do absolutely everything. It is acting with sound, we have to capture the emotion. I tell everyone, if I'm sad and I put my hands together, there's like a little sadness to it. It drags a little. But if I'm happy, there's an upbeat to my hand. Same goes with footsteps, anything that they touch.

Like Brent said, it's a performance thing. If you want just a hand pat, they could cut it from the library. You are cutting the emotion. Especially with Ted Lasso, especially season 2, there are a lot of emotions that go into it. And with Beard in episode 9, you know, there are so many emotions going into there, so we have to play that as much as we can when we're doing Foley. We listen to production, we get Brent's notes ahead of time, and if we have questions it's so great, we just call him. He's always ready to answer, which is great. So that's basically the process of Foley.

Screen Rant: And how much are these guys editing what you send them after it's recorded?

Sanaa Kelley: We have to go as close to perfect as possible. A lot of TV shows and stuff, it goes straight to the stage, but Brent really really cares about it. After we're done and we edit on the fly, we send it to him, and he takes it over and just makes it absolutely perfect. Which is great, because then we know it's going to be great, we don't have to worry about it. And if we need extra time, we call him, "Hey Brent, this is a little harder, can we get extra time?"

Ninety-nine percent of the time, other people say "No. Make it work," but Brent will be like "Yeah. Let me call them, let me get you extra time. No problem," so we don't have to sacrifice sound because we don't have enough time. He'll get us extra time if we want to, which is really really great to have in a sound team. Which is really unusual. Any Foley artist will tell you that.

Screen Rant: And Bernard, I know you work with the dialogue. How much does get recorded on set, and how much is ADR [Automated Dialogue Replacement] done after, and do you treat those differently in post when you're editing?

Bernard Weiser: Sure. The ADR and the dialogue are different areas, different parts of dialogue, and they each have their own workflow. To start with your questions, though, the production dialogue holds up really well on this show, and there's actually an amazingly little amount of ADR. That's not to say that there isn't any, because every show has its challenges, and certainly, a series goes to many different locations oftentimes, and each has a unique challenge for dialogue.

This show, especially being an ensemble cast, has its own challenges there. Especially when you have lots of characters in the same scene, it's making choices to make sure the storyline is being followed, and not just so many voices on top of each other that you just get lost in the process. So that affects choices in ADR as well. When that storyline isn't being followed, what can you do to maybe redo a voice to make sure it pops out, or any additional lines that need to come into it. So, each scene is its own unique situation.

In the episode that we're centering on, episode 9, Brent always likes to talk about a scene that's outside on the street at night, where there's lots of noise, and the woman's voice wasn't able to be understood all that well with all the background. So, we did pretty much the whole scene, I believe, though in the end we only used two lines. But by picking and choosing and massaging and working with it back and forth... again, just like Foley, having the time to do that, it's very difficult to know what we ADR'd and what was production. It ended up matching very, very, very well.

And it's that added amount of time to massage things to make it all work together, because all of these processes are done with their own workflow. They're done very differently, but it all has to come together and then gel together. And when you get that, you get a seamless track.

Screen Rant: You mentioned Coach Beard's episode. That's obviously such a unique episode as a viewer, just watching Ted Lasso, but what else made that special on your end?

Bernard Weiser: It's interesting; it's a different attitude. We knew it right away. The minute we saw there was going to be an episode on Coach Beard, I remember having a group chat going like, "Oh, boy, we see this coming." This is before we knew the script or anything, we knew it was going to be its own thing, because Coach Beard is such an interesting character on his own, in his own way. And certainly, the episode delivered exactly that.

I think what it does is it stretches everything, not just dialogue. Even Foley... what Sanaa did with the Foley in very specific areas is just amazing. Ask her about the keys, because it's an interesting story. But dialogue-wise, just keeping everything straight. You do things to give each scene a different feel, because it helps you as a storyteller. Again, we're all storytellers here, and we do it within our own domains to keep pushing the storyline.

In that sense, you want each scene to feel a little bit different, so you're going along the journey. If each scene to scene sounded the same, you get bored, you get lackadaisical. But when you get something new, the brain stays attentive to what's going on. So you want to follow that. And then again with the dialogue, it's polishing, making sure the storyline is coming through.

Brent Findley: And that episode especially was a playground for us, sound design-wise. Beard is taking this journey through the evening, through the night, overnight. Every three to five minutes is a completely different location with a completely different sequence of events. So, we're not returning to an office, returning to the pitch, or returning to - it's not a back and forth like a typical layout of an episode would be, where you explore a certain storyline then kind of go back and pick up another one as you're checkerboarding a storyline throughout. This is a sequence, in series, so everything he's doing just progresses from one thing to the next.

Each of these separate types of vignettes, I'll call them, had to have its own feel, and the dialogue comes across with that. A contrast in the dialogue, for example, would be when Beard goes into the hotel lobby to borrow the guy's phone, that host at the desk is a very intense fellow. He has an energy about him that is very intense.

Contrast that with the character Red, the woman who fixes Beard's pants. That's a very noir, low-key, kind of a Mickey Spillane type feel. Mickey Spillane is a reference, I think, the whole sequence feels like that. An old detective story.

Brent Findley: Yeah. And then we're also not ever sure whether we are in reality or in Beard's mind. There's an odd number of times that we slip into his... we have this little design element that kind of goes into - this is like when Beard starts hearing the pundits on TV, the sportscasters, talking about him. So we shift into this "Is this - this is just in his brain, what is going on?" We do that an odd number of times. So it's not an even in and out of "We slip into dream, we come out of dream, we go into dream, we come out of dream."

If you're counting, if we started in the dream, then maybe we come out of it at the end when Beard puts his legs up on the desk. If we started in reality, do we ever come back to reality? And I just love that whole idea that it's up to the viewer, it's an open book for the viewer to decide what they just saw. And I think that's fantastic, it's just never really concretely nailed down.

Screen Rant: Sure, that's wonderful.

Bernard Weiser: Yeah. There's an interesting storyline in here that goes away from the main characters, but it's interesting because it's part of the Ted Lasso feel to it. And that's the fans. The group of fans that Beard hooks up with, and they end up in their own fantasy, which is interesting. And this joy, they end up in their own paradise, because they get to play on the field, on the sacred pitch. And it's such a wonderful scene. You don't expect it, and then you go "What in the world is going on?" And then you go "Oh, my word, that is just -"

I thought it's brilliant, because it touches on kind of the common guy, the common person, and what's important to them, and the joy they get from something like this. And then it works back toward all the characters, Coach Beard, and his seeing that and setting that up for them, it's just a wonderful aspect of Ted Lasso. That is the show, it is the series, in these relationships and attention to the relationships, and the joys that they can get from sometimes a simple thing.

Screen Rant: Sanaa, what's the Foley key story?

Sanaa Kelley: The keys... so we did some keys, and we gave Brent a sample and he's like "Yeah, no, I need more." He described it, and I'm like "Okay, I got it, I got it." So I went to an antique store, they sell really old things, and I found skeleton keys, but like different sizes, and this big like metal ring that we had to open. And we just had to keep playing with different sounds to get it, you know, just the right ting that Brent described to me. but it was funny, because when I went to the antique store, I was sitting there listening to the keys, and I was like "Oh, I do sound, I'm Foley," and they thought I was nuts. But I get that whenever I shop for props.

But it was just so great because the minute - a lot of times, you ask your supervisor "What do you think?" Like the minute Matt Salib - the other Foley artist - and I heard that exact combo, we were like "Yes! He's going to love it." Then that's when I reached out to Brent, and he's like "That's the one." That was really really important throughout episode 9, which Brent will explain, how that played with the music and everything else throughout that episode. So that was a really fun prop to shop for.

Brent: Yeah, Beard's apartment keys are with us the whole episode. We start with him after he leaves Coach Lasso at the stadium. He goes to his apartment, that's the first time we see the keys - he pulls the key out, we go into his apartment. At that point, the keys are just keys. You don't necessarily clock that they are a mechanism throughout the episode, but what really takes off is that he goes to the bar, pulls his hand out of his pocket, and there's a little ring out as his keys fall onto the floor. So that's Sanaas' ring out, that she was talking about, it sings on the way down to the floor. So it hits the floor, and then it's Baz that picks it up, or one of the soccer hooligans, and says "Hey, you dropped your keys," and then we're off to the races. Then the story just takes off from there.

And then the keys show up, and we keep doing this ring out. When he's with Red in her apartment, when she's working on his pants, she says "You dropped your keys." But we're in Beard's head this episode, so we purposefully did not play the keys falling on the ground when he actually dropped them. Because in that environment Beard would have heard them, because there's not any music, no bar noise or anything going on, but also just the idea that his head is not connected concrete in reality at the moment, so she had to tell him "You dropped your keys." Then we hear him, he picks them up, does a little twirl... Sanaa's awesome Foley again... and puts them back in his pocket.

And then I think the coup d'état on the Reel Foley Sounds team for the keys was during the fight in the catacombs, or whatever that alley kind of area is. Beard feels he deserves to get beat up. He needs this, it's cathartic for him, so it's the slow mournful "Blue Moon" rendition by Marcus Mumford, and just an absolutely gorgeously painful scene to watch, but also the way those keys... so Sanaa rung out this key, as Beard's falling, the key's flying out of his pocket, and then we tuned that, pitched it, to be in tune with the song. So that, it's sound design, it plays with the music, so they are supporting each other at that moment. It just lends itself to that mournful... the whole song, the whole scene, it's all part of that. I just love the journey of the keys in this episode.

Screen Rant: That's so cool. I'm so happy I get to speak with all of you, because what you do is so subtle, but it's everything. It's so important.

Brent Findley: Thank you. I'm glad you picked up on that, because we love it. It's one of those things, like, if people really notice our work, I almost feel like we did it too heavy-handed. We would love for it just to be subtle and for people to feel the story. We're serving the story, they're feeling the emotion, they're taking the journey of the story that the actors are putting down on the screen for us. The picture editors make these sequences have a pace, the composers bring the score together, so we all support and serve that final storytelling. But we don't want to put a pin on it and say "Hey, that was us!" It wouldn't work if it were only one of us, only one department. Picture, wardrobe, story, editing, any of that... it has to be all of us together.

Sanaa Kelley: And in Foley, it's not just one person, it's a team. There's always Matt Salib and myself, the Foley artists, and the mixers are Jordan McClain and Arno Stephanian. So it's always a group effort, never all by ourselves. And it's really important because then you get different sounds, not just one person's doing it. We split the main characters. One will get Ted, and so on.

Brent Findley: And Sanaa's team will send... her mixers and editors get it really tight. They're used to sending stuff directly to the mix stage, so it's got to be tight and ready to roll. So they do that for us, and then Kip Smedley, our effects editor, sound designer on our sound team, he'll take their work and incorporate it into his work as far as laying it together. Because there will be moments where we will do a sound effect out of a library. A door slam, door open, refrigerator... maybe it's a glass jar out of a refrigerator off that - you get that quintessential wire rack rigout of the refrigerator.

But that's got to play with Sanaa grabbing the jar, or grabbing the doorknob, or maybe there's an extra pat on the door after the close. So we want to make sure - one of the keys that was taught to me a long long time ago by a re-recording mixer was, if you want everyone to hear everything, don't play it all at once. One of the things we'll do is, Kip will take Sanaa's work, see how it plays against his work, and maybe kind of make a little room. Maybe we make that hand grab a little early or late, or maybe we make the actual door latch a little later, so we can hear the grab. Because together, it could just sound like mud. So we can kind of play around with this to help tell the story, because we're not tied to the literal execution of that sound. We want to artfully present the sound.

Bernard Weiser: Yeah, same thing in dialogue, too. Like I say, when you have a large scene with lots of voices, lots of things going on, you've got to find the right thread. Sometimes, it's offstage dialogue that might be in the way, and you can slide it, you can do all sorts of things to make sure there's a little bit of a depression that has your main storyline in it. So the main voices that are going to carry you through are right up in front, and the others just add color to it. You don't want to lose the energy from it.

Brent Findley: Like having a whispery conversation in the stadium during a game is tough.

Screen Rant: That's a testament to what you do, because no way would you be able to hear everyone's conversations in a locker room, but it still feels natural watching it in the show. So, is there something you're working on now? I know a date for Ted Lasso season 3 hasn't been announced, but what are you up to?

Brent Findley: Well, season three is well underway for production. That's okay to say, that's not a secret. We're getting really close to starting to dig into the post for that. Hopefully, that will be underway soon, don't have an exact date yet because they're at the point of working on the art of the picture, the art of the story, and they'll loose it to us when it's ready for the next step. So, as much as I want them to hurry up because I like working on the show, I don't want them to rush a good thing either.

I'm on another Apple TV series called Little America. It's an anthology series, on season 2, and it's a really great show about immigrants to America and their story, and how they got their foothold in the country. And it's modern-day, it's not a historical black-and-white kind of thing. It's based on true stories of real immigrants, and it's a great real-life story to tell, so it's fun.

Bernard Weiser: And I've finished up on a season of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and in between that and when we start on Ted Lasso, I'll start work on a small Screen Gems horror movie, which is always interesting. It's where dialogue and design actually cross paths in a strong way, so it's interesting and creative even though it's a small, low-budget picture.

Sanaa Kelley: Well, I had to sign a few non-disclosures. I'm working on two big video games, I'm not allowed to say which ones, two features - I did ask, like "Hey guys, can I please mention -" and they were like "No." I can't even post on IMDB, so I can't talk about those. But I just finished The Cleaning Lady, and Riverdale we still have going on. We finished The Flight Attendant... we do about 18 shows a week here, so...

I have three stages, so we keep pretty busy. And because of my TikToks, I am working on doing a reality TV [show] that's going to come out really soon, so - again, that's all the production company allowed me to say - but a lot of exciting things going on.

Seasons 1 and 2 of Ted Lasso are streaming now on AppleTV+.

More: Ted Lasso: Keeley Leaving AFC Richmond Is Most Important Story (Not Nate)

Owen Danoff is a features writer for Screen Rant, covering movies and TV shows he would be watching and taking about anyway. Owen has been an avid consumer of science fiction and fantasy books, films, television shows, and video games for most of his life, and credits them for his love of storytelling and writing in general. Personal favorites include Star Wars movies, Brandon Sanderson books, and the Mass Effect games. Owen is also a songwriter and musician with a history of releasing his own music as well as collaborating with other artists. When not writing, Owen is usually thinking about writing, or playing Apex Legends.