Warning: This post contains spoilers for Season 4’s sixth episode, “Don’t Jump Around Much Anymore.”
As Roy Kent said, “He never misses.”
Jamie Tartt returned to Richmond in Ted Lasso’s standout New Year’s Eve episode, likely earning Phil Dunster a 2027 guest actor Emmy nomination in the process. The striker was in town from Barcelona to launch his new Tartt apple vodka with a Garden of Eden release party attended by Roy (Brett Goldstein), Keeley (Juno Temple), and Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham).
Roy’s enthusiasm at seeing a blond Jamie pop up on stage at the end of a choreographed number wearing only nude briefs and a strategically placed fig leaf was understandable. “Phil is so game. He was like, ‘The less the better,’” episode director Declan Lowney tells Gold Derby of the actor’s wardrobe choice. “And I’m pretty sure that he picked those trousers and the shirt he wore later as well, which are just so cool on him. He wanted to bleach his hair — that’s such commitment. It’s amazing because you really see how that character changed in those two years. And you realize some things just haven’t changed. He’s grown hugely, but he’s still Jamie Tartt, especially when he’s been off in Spain very much left to his own devices.”
Here, Lowney and production designer Paul Cripps offer more color commentary.
The Pitch
According to Lowney, the initial concept for the episode, written by Dylan Marron, involved a trip to Barcelona. Logistically, however, it was much easier to bring Jamie to London. When Cripps learned that Jamie would be shilling a surprisingly tasty apple vodka, he suggested the Garden of Eden theme to Jason Sudeikis and had a clear vision for the promotional video that precedes Jamie’s reveal. “I wanted it to be like the cutout animations Terry Gilliam created for Monty Python,” Cripps says, adding that Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 16th century painting The Fall of Man was the artistic inspiration. Producers realized they could use a screenshot from the short, animated by the VFX studio Parliament, for the vodka’s label and the punchline that Jamie’s face on the bottle looks more Picasso than Old Master after he insisted the designers keep noodling with it.
Saving Private Roy
Once clothed, Jamie joined Roy, Keeley, and Rebecca at a booth to catch up, sharing that his Spanish is coming along “très bien, merci” and proving that manspreading is alive and well (that was all Dunster, the director says). Keeley and Rebecca invited the gentlemen to join them at the boat party that Zelda (Tracey Ullman) was hosting in the Lady Greyhounds’ honor, but Jamie said he was contractually obligated to stay at his shindig until midnight barring a family emergency or “an act of God, like, um, an earthquake or a crucifixion.” Roy had other plans and started to leave… until the DJ dropped House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” which he was powerless to resist.
Supple Nam, who also choreographed the Beyoncé-esque vodka number, spent some time with Goldstein and Dunster to perfect their dance moves and gestures, Lowney says: “It was great because you really got the sense that these two guys have done this together before in a club as part of ‘their thing,’ and that maybe they’ve done it individually when they were younger.”
As it turns out, Roy should not have jumped around. He blew out his knee and fell to the ground. Jamie swooped him up like a hero and carried him off the crowded dance floor, shouting “Move, everyone! I’m saving Private Roy!” That homage to Saving Private Ryan was something someone suggested on set. “It was one of those things that’s just thrown in, and you go, ‘F–king brilliant,’” Lowney says.
Keeping straight faces was a challenge during the reunion. “There was a lot of laughter. There always is with those guys,” Lowney says. “It was a pretty tough schedule, and it is very frustrating, as a director, when the cast are corpsing. But if they weren’t corpsing, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun and the material wouldn’t be as good. They have a good time, and I think that’s really important.” (Lowney means that; he’s helmed nine episodes of Ted Lasso to date, including Season 2’s beloved “Carol of the Bells,” and is a director on Goldstein’s upcoming Prime Video series Escorted.)
The Hospital
In light of the family emergency (awww!), Jamie accompanied Roy and the ladies to the hospital, where he told a nurse about his plan to turn Roy’s patella into a necklace; got mistaken for Roy’s son; and confused Voltaire with Voltron while counseling Rebecca on the dangers of seeking perfection.
Roy’s hospital stay was momentous for two additional reasons. Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn) surprised Rebecca by showing up to reconcile just in time for a midnight kiss. (While on set, Lowney had the idea for the camera to pan down and find Jamie hugging them at their waists.) And Keeley overheard a drugged Roy expressing his feelings to his doctor/new girlfriend (Laura Haddock), but she stopped eavesdropping before he said, “I love you, Keeley.”
Lowney knows fans will be disappointed that Keeley ends the night none the wiser. “That is heartbreaking. Literally by three seconds she missed him saying what would have made all the difference,” he says. “But there’s only so long we can keep these two people apart. We’ll have to see where that one goes.”
All Aboard!
The only thing that could have made Jamie’s return even better is if he had somehow ended up on Zelda’s boat for a nightcap. That soiree, which is rightly described in the episode as Great Gatsby if Maleficent was the host, was originally written to take place on a super yacht, Cripps says. “To get it down the Thames and get it through Tower Bridge is not easy but also very costly,” he explains. They downgraded to a white barge used for events and let the set decorator go to work. They filmed three nights, from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., last winter. “I just remember everybody being cold and miserable and tired and trying to get a party atmosphere,” Lowney says. Sudeikis had the idea for the Eyes Wide Shut twist late in the game. “I said, ‘Oh, could you get a guy and blindfold him?’” the director says with a laugh. “I thought, ‘I’ll give him an accordion.’ The guy couldn’t play or anything, but we just dubbed in that track, and it sounds so cool when he comes down the steps. I remember we were running all over London trying to get Eyes Wide Shut-type masks at the last minute so everybody had one.”
He loved directing Ullman. “You hear her before you see her. Whenever she makes an entrance, about three seconds before she arrives, she’s shouting something off-camera,” Lowney says. “It’s always a joy because every take is different. I hope [her performance] is a good revelation for people, because I feel people have forgotten about her a bit here. And Zelda’s a really interesting character across the rest of the season.”
The Closure We Didn’t Know We Needed
The holidays are a season of forgiving. On the boat, assistant coach Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds) finally apologized for how she treated Gemma (Abbie Hern) when they played together. Later, Gemma innocently shared Alice’s insecurity about not being liked with the rest of the team, thinking it would help her to hear that she isn’t hated by them either. But a vulnerable Alice lashed out at Gemma instead.
More satisfying was the extended heart-to-heart between Ted and his ex-wife, Michelle (Andrea Anders), who explained that she was so broken after their divorce, she pursued their former marriage counselor because at least he already knew her issues.
“It’s about a three-and-a-half minute scene, of just two people talking. I didn’t want to do too many takes with them, so instead of shooting wide-shot, mid-shot, close-up, we just did a really slow move in the whole time on her while she’s talking, and then on him while he’s listening, and just intercut the two of them,” Lowney says. “It really seems like it joins them together instead of it being so cut, cut, cut, different size, different size, different size. And the story is amazing: I love the vision of her in her pajamas at the supermarket meeting doctor what’s his name, and how we all thought he was the baddie but he didn’t come looking for her. Just to know that she’d gone through all that, because we tend not to think of what Michelle’s been through. I thought it was a beautiful moment between the two, and a very lovely thing at midnight that they’re really proper friends.”
Michelle and Ted are truly at a place where she can encourage him to open himself up to love again (perhaps dating that stage manager?), and he can thank her for always, and still, believing in him.
She insisted Ted go downstairs to meet up with his team, who’d moved their after-party outside the pub after Mae (Annette Badland) upheld their ban (even though the blokes they’d brawled with earlier in the season are now fans!). Ted returned upstairs to discover that Michelle had made him a new BELIEVE sign using their son’s school project supplies.
“She looks down at the table and sees the flags, the color paper, and the color pens, and you don’t know what she’s going to do. When he comes back in and then picks it up,” Lowney says with a heartwarming sigh. “Simply having the Believe sign kicks off the second half of the season.”
