Roy Kent is a character in an American sports drama-comedy television program, Ted Lasso which relates the tale of an American college football coach who gets hired by AFC Richmond, an English team.
Jason Sudeikis portrays the title character Lasso, while Brett Goldstein plays Roy Kent, the AFC Richmond captain and a box-to-box midfielder who is nearing the end of his playing days.
Kent resembles Roy Keane, the former captain of Manchester United, in that he is aggressive and has a short fuse, but is the Irishman actually Kent’s role model?
Futballnews looks at the correlations and the likes…
Is Roy Kent from Ted Lasso based on United Legend Roy Keane?
The real-life rock star Roy Keane served as a major inspiration for Ted Lasso’s Roy Kent character.
After a successful career in which he won the UEFA Champions League with Chelsea, Kent is well-respected by his teammates in the show and has therefore joined AFC Richmond. Kent is currently in his final lap.
Kent is the captain of his side, same as Keane was while at Manchester United. They play in the middle of the park and are nearly identical in build.
The show’s co-creator, Brendan Hunt, claimed that the dynamics of Kent’s characters were heavily influenced by Keane’s altercation with Mick McCarthy, which led to his expulsion from the Ireland team before the 2002 World Cup.
“When we were getting into football, (it) was the peak era of Manchester United…that butted up against the Roy Keane soap opera of the 2002 World Cup. And though I was not a Man United fan, and I’m still not, I just was fascinated by Roy Keane,” Hunt said in an interview with Irish radio network Spin 103.8.
“When we’re putting this together as a show we said, ‘We know that Ted’s nice, what is an existing football archetype that he would have to deal with?’ And we could think of no greater obstacle than human bummer Roy Keane in his midst.”
Who is Roy Kent?
As the former captain of AFC Richmond and current head coach of the team, Roy Kent is one of the key characters in the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso.
After winning the Champions League with Chelsea FC, Roy was regarded as one of the league’s top players. However, he has watched his abilities deteriorate as he nears the conclusion of his career, something he is aware of, even if he is still a highly appreciated fan favorite.
Because he is the oldest player on the team, he is rarely seen with the other players. He would typically head straight home following practice
Now that he was a coach, he would spend some time with The Diamond Dogs, who included Ted Lasso, Coach Beard, Leslie Higgins, and Nathan Shelley.
How was Roy Kent first introduced?
Roy Kent was only a working name for the character during pre-production. But eventually the name remained.
“We got closer and closer to shooting it and I’m like, ‘Guys, he’s still named Roy Kent, we’re not going to keep his name Roy Kent, right? We’re going to change it.’ And they’re like, ‘Why would we change it? Roy Kent is great,” revealed Hunt.
Similar to Keane, Kent decides to pursue coaching after hanging up his boots and returns to Richmond as Lasso’s assistant manager.
Similar to this, in 2013 Keane also accepted the position of assistant manager for the Irish national team. He later served in the same position at Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. In addition, both characters worked briefly as football analysts after retiring.
Kent spends the majority of his alone time with his niece Phoebe and his partner Keeley Jones.
What is Ted Lasso?
A sports comedy-drama television program called Ted Lasso was created by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly.
It is based on a persona that Sudeikis first played in a series of advertisements for NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage in England.
The show centers on Ted Lasso, an American college football coach who is secretly hired to lead an English soccer team with the hope that his inexperience will cause it to fail but whose folksy, upbeat leadership turns out to be surprisingly effective.
On August 14, 2020, the first three episodes of the season’s ten total episodes debuted on Apple TV+. Thereafter, new episodes were released every week.
A 12-episode second season debuted on July 23, 2021. The third season of the show, which will begin in early to mid-2023, was renewed for another season in October 2020.
