Brownstein: Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammed takes a winning kick at Just for Laughs

Montreal Gazette

6 days ago

Ted Lasso fans best not go to the Just for Laughs solo show Mr. Swallow: Show Pony expecting one of the series's stars, the Emmy-nominated Nick Mohammed, to reprise his role as rival soccer-team coach Nate.
Mohammed's character on Ted Lasso is forever brooding and morose and feeling betrayed. Mohammed's work in Mr. Swallow: Show Pony is anything but.
Attired in a glittering gold lamé jacket, Mohammed speaks frenetically in a high-pitched tone and displays the sort of high-end energy that sounds like way too much helium intake. Mohammed's act here is mentalism, magic, music, drama and — oh yeah — comedy with raucous crowd interaction.
Simply put, the show, running until Saturday at Le Gesù, is rollickingly hysterical and about as original as anything ever assembled on a JFL stage — which is saying something in light of past fest performances from Mr. Methane and Stevie (the Regurgitator) Starr.
Without giving away too much about his show, Mohammed's Mr. Swallow explains, with self-deprecating wit, how he must carry the aspirations of England's South Asian community on his shoulders — even though Mohammed is not South Asian as many presume: his mom is from Cyprus and his dad from Trinidad. He also notes, removing a shoe and sock, that he has been mysteriously endowed with a white foot to help him get his foot in the door of a lily-white cultural industry.
Mohammed throws everything into his act, save for the roller skates he has been known to don and occasionally dazzle audiences with on stage.
In his dressing room following his debut show Wednesday evening, Mohammed, 44, simply attired in a black T-shirt, is low-key and calm.
While his stage act is well known in the U.K., he realizes crowds on this side of the pond could be taken by surprise with his Mr. Swallow antics.
'This is a character, truly based on a teacher of mine, that I've been doing since I was 15 in my school playground and professionally for the last 20 years,' he says. 'It's been with me for so, so long.
'I've always loved magic and mentalism, but that sort of crept out of my career once other comedy took over. I used to gig as a working magician, table hopping at weddings and hotels. Now I've tried to refine it a little.'
Given his wide-ranging, cheerful, extroverted skills, one may wonder why he was ever cast to play such a dour, introverted character like Ted Lasso's Nate.
'The role actually got quite challenging toward the end. But I've always loved the idea of being quite malleable in terms of the way you inhabit a different character. For me, that's the real joy of being an actor — like the Ted Lasso character, whom I found so interesting on a different level,' explains Mohammed, who has appeared in films like The Martian with Matt Damon and the coming Control with James McAvoy and Julianne Moore.
But Mohammed, who has been nominated twice for a supporting-actor Emmy for the Apple streaming series, says he has been gobsmacked by Ted Lasso's global popularity.
'It's weird, because for the first season we were all quite sheltered from the success of it. We weren't travelling because of COVID. But now we can't get away from it. And we're all so grateful for it.'
The fourth season of Ted Lasso — winner of back-to-back Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys for its first two seasons — just started production in ... not London, as in the previous seasons, but Kansas City, the hometown of lead star Jason Sudeikis. But the plan is to return to London.
In this iteration, Ted (Sudeikis) takes on a new challenge: coaching a second-division women's soccer team. Series regulars like Emmy winners Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein, along with Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift, are all back for another kick at the ball.
But Mohammed is here, so whither Nate?
The glint in his eye suggests Nate may not be forsaken in Season 4.
'Well, who knows? We'll have to see,' he allows, before letting loose with a hearty laugh.
'I know they're in Kansas at the moment, so we'll just see what happens.' Pause. 'I'm being very coy.'
But the coyness and wide grin show no trace of bitterness, so one could easily infer that Nate will be back on the pitch, likely in a melancholic state once again.
'These are all good theories,' he says. 'And don't forget they film these shows over a long time.'
Mohammed concedes that while his dad was a huge soccer fan who took him to games, he was much more arts-oriented growing up.
'I spent a lot of time doing magic and playing music, but I also liked to do a lot of gymnastics as a kid. But since doing Ted Lasso, I'm increasingly falling in love with the sport. Jason and Brett and producer Joe Kelly, who created the show together, are such sports nuts, so you can't help but be affected by it.'
This is Mohammed's first foray to Montreal and JFL, but, based on opening-night reaction, it won't be his last.
'I've always tried to do something that's a bit of an antidote to something that can get too heavy, but what's nice in this show hopefully is that there is a little bit of stuff in there about race and identity. It's like having my cake and eating it.'
And certainly getting his foot in the door.
AT A GLANCE