Jason Sudeikis

• 1. Introduction

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  Jason Sudeikis was born Daniel Jason Sudeikis on the 18th of September 1975, and his surname is pronounced suu-DAY-kiss. He was born with anosmia, which means he has no sense of smell. Comedy depends on noticing the details of a room, and he built a career on every sense but that one.

  How does a performer who started out in small improv theaters end up on one of the most watched sketch shows in America? What does it take to play real politicians, cartoon neighbors and romantic leads without being locked into any of them? And how did a character from a pair of promotional videos grow into an award-winning series that its star helped write? The answers begin far from any television studio.

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• 2. Kansas To Chicago

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  Kathryn Sudeikis, born Kathryn Wendt, worked as a travel agent at Brennco and later became president of the American Society of Travel Agents. His father is Daniel Joseph Sudeikis. The family tree has Irish and Lithuanian roots on his father's side and German and Irish roots on his mother's. Through his mother, Sudeikis is a nephew of the actor George Wendt and a great-grandson of the photographer Tom Howard.

  Overland Park, in Johnson County, Kansas, is the place Sudeikis calls his hometown. He graduated from Shawnee Mission West High School there. Fort Scott Community College then offered him a basketball scholarship, but he left before finishing his studies.

  ComedySportz in Kansas City, Missouri, now called Comedy City, was where his improv career began in the 1990s. From there he moved to Chicago. He studied at the Annoyance Theatre on the city's North Side and at IO Theater, formerly known as ImprovOlympic, in the Near North Side. He was also a founding member of a long-form team called J.T.S. Brown.

  Amsterdam came next, where he performed with Boom Chicago. Back in the United States he joined The Second City Touring Company. In the early 2000s he became a founding member of The Second City Las Vegas, performing at the Flamingo. In 2003 he was still on that Las Vegas stage when a family connection was about to change his job.

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• 3. Saturday Night Live

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  George Wendt, his uncle, recommended him to a woman named Marci Klein in 2003. That recommendation got Sudeikis hired as a sketch writer for Saturday Night Live, while he was still a regular performer in Las Vegas.

  In May 2005 he moved in front of the cameras as a featured player. On the 30th of September 2006, at the start of the show's 32nd season, he was upgraded to repertory status. Across his time there, credits list 174 episodes, with writing included. He also appeared in six episodes of the spinoff Weekend Update Thursday between 2008 and 2012.

  In July 2013 he announced that he was leaving after nine seasons as a cast member. The exit was not complete. He returned for occasional appearances in 2015-2016 and 2019.

  On the 23rd of October 2021, Sudeikis finally hosted the show, with Brandi Carlile as the musical guest. By then he was the star of a series on Apple TV+ that he had helped create.

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• 4. Cast Of Characters

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  Three real politicians passed through his impression repertoire: George W. Bush, the 43rd president, and Joe Biden, the 47th vice president and later the 46th president. The third was Mitt Romney, the 70th governor of Massachusetts and the 2012 Republican nominee for president.

  Kristen Wiig was his partner in several bits. Sudeikis played the male half of the Two A-Holes alongside her. He also played Gil, a news anchor who found the misfortunes of his field correspondent Michelle Dison, played by Wiig, funny rather than alarming.

  Will Forte shared two of his stranger pairings. On Weekend Update, the two played Jon Bovi, an "opposite band" version of Bon Jovi. In another sketch, Sudeikis played Pete Twinkle, an ESPN Classic host of obscure women's sports, opposite Forte as his dim-witted co-host Greg Stink.

  Music and dance supplied more targets. Ocean Billy parodied the 1980s singer Billy Ocean and his hit "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car". Vance, a background dancer on "What Up with That?", wore an Adidas tracksuit and a 1980s perm and was overzealous about it.

  Officer Sikorsky was a police officer who dragged the convict Lorenzo McIntosh, played by Kenan Thompson, in front of three delinquent teens. Those teens were played by Bill Hader, Bobby Moynihan and Andy Samberg, with the week's guest host sometimes joining them. On Weekend Update, Sudeikis also appeared as the Devil, who pointed out religious and moral hypocrisy on Earth.

  Sensei Mark Hoffman taught Japanese Studies to two students named Jonathan Cavanaugh-san and Rebecca Stern-Markowitz-san, played by Taran Killam and Vanessa Bayer. They hosted "J-Pop America Fun Time Now". Another entry on the list was Marshall T. Boudreaux, host of a courtroom reality show called Maine Justice.

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• 5. Sidekick To Leading Man

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  On 30 Rock, Sudeikis appeared in 12 episodes between 2007 and 2010 as Floyd DeBarber, a love interest for Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon. His last four episodes came near the end of the show's fourth season, in 2010.

  The Cleveland Show, which ran from 2009 to 2013, gave him two voices. Holt Richter was Cleveland's wannabe hipster neighbor, and Terry Kimple was a hard-partying high school buddy who worked with Cleveland at the cable company. Credited as a recurring guest in season one, he became a series regular from season two.

  In 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV gave him the voice of Richard Bastion, a right-wing radio host. That July he co-starred with Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio in a web series called The Line on Crackle. His film debut years were busy with supporting parts: Watching the Detectives, The Ten and Meet Bill in 2007, then What Happens in Vegas and The Rocker in 2008.

  On the 16th of August 2010, Sudeikis co-hosted WWE Raw at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. His partners were Charlie Day and Justin Long, his co-stars in Going the Distance. That film and The Bounty Hunter were both released in 2010.

  The year 2011 shifted his career. Seth Gordon's Horrible Bosses put him alongside Charlie Day, with whom he had worked on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where he played Schmitty and returned for the seventh season finale. Hall Pass, from the Farrelly brothers, gave him his first lead film role. On the 5th of June 2011 he also hosted the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.

  Applebee's began running advertisements in 2012 with his voice. That same year he appeared in six episodes of Eastbound & Down. In 2013 he starred as David Clark, a drug dealer, in We're the Millers, with Jennifer Aniston, Emma Roberts and Will Poulter. He returned as Kurt Buckman in Horrible Bosses 2 in 2014.

  In 2015, Sudeikis played Jake in the romantic comedy Sleeping with Other People. He also starred opposite Rebecca Hall in Tumbledown. The year 2016 brought Colossal, in which he starred beside Anne Hathaway, and the voice of Red in The Angry Birds Movie. Red returned in the 2019 sequel.

  Stage work followed in November and December 2016, when he played John Keating in an Off-Broadway production of Dead Poets Society at the Classic Stage Company. In 2017 he executive produced Detroiters and appeared in two episodes. Kodachrome that year paired him with Ed Harris and Elizabeth Olsen, and Downsizing gave him the role of Dave Johnson.

  In 2019 he turned up on The Mandalorian as a scout trooper, and he appeared in Olivia Wilde's Booksmart. Late that year he began work on a project he co-wrote.

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• 6. Ted Lasso

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  In 2013 and 2014, NBC Sports ran two promotional videos in which Sudeikis played Ted Lasso. The character was a hapless American football coach brought to England to lead Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

  In late 2019 he co-wrote and starred in a series built around the same idea. This time the club was fictional, and its name was AFC Richmond. Ted Lasso arrived on Apple TV+ in August 2020 and was received warmly. It earned Sudeikis a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

  At the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, the series won Outstanding Comedy Series, and Sudeikis won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He was also nominated that night for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. Over the run of the show, his total reached four Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. In 2021 he appeared on the Time 100 list and on Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential list.

  In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Sudeikis said the original version of the main character was reworked to be kinder. He tied the change to the culture surrounding Donald Trump's presidency. The character also crossed into games, when Sudeikis voiced Ted Lasso in FIFA 23 in 2022.

  The show had originally been planned to finish after its third season. In March 2025, Sudeikis announced a fourth.

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• 7. Home And Courtside

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  In June 2004, Sudeikis married the screenwriter Kay Cannon after five years together. The two had been cast members together at The Second City Las Vegas. They separated in 2008 and divorced in February 2010.

  Olivia Wilde was his partner from 2011 to 2020. The pair became engaged in January 2013 but never married. They have a son, born in April 2014, and a daughter, born in October 2016.

  Basketball led him into charity work. He played in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game in 2011 and again in 2016. In Kansas City, he and other local celebrities have hosted the Big Slick for many years, raising money for the Cancer Center at Children's Mercy Hospital. As of 2023, the event had raised more than $21 million.

  On the 3rd of November 2018, Sudeikis hosted a benefit concert called Thundergong! at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City. It supported a foundation called Steps of Faith, which helps provide prosthetic legs and arms.

  He holds season tickets to New York Liberty games and follows the Brooklyn Nets as well, since he lives near the arena where both teams play. Indiana Fever player Caitlin Clark is a favorite of his. He has attended many of her college and professional games, and once canceled a scheduled speaking appearance to watch her play.

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