Soccer’s bad boy Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) is back with AFC Richmond on Season 2 of “Ted Lasso,” and so is his chant. Do, do, do, do, do, do.
But is the chant to the “Baby Shark” ditty even the best one from the Greyhound faithful? Not if the recently retired Roy Kent’s (Brett Goldstein) chant — “He’s here, he’s there, he’s every f—ing where!” — has anything to say about it.
We asked Dunster and Goldstein, separately, which character got the better terrace chant out of the writers’ room.
“There’s merit to both, there’s a lot more swearing in Roy’s,” Dunster, who plays superstar/the super-selfish Tartt, told TheWrap.
“Brett Goldstein absolutely prefers Roy Kent’s one. He loves a good curse,” Dunster continued. “But listen, there’s a reason that ‘Baby Shark’ is the the most-watched or the second most-watched video on YouTube of all time. It’s a catchy one. It just gets you right down deep.”
Touché.
Goldstein, also a writer on the show, didn’t explicitly say Roy’s was better than Jamie’s, but he did give us one ranking — and a nugget from the cutting room floor.
“I think we had a few versions of the chant and there was one that had the line in it: ‘He’ll kill your f—ing Gran,’” Goldstein recalled. “If I’m completely honest, that was my choice.”
That one would definitely be the grizzled and grumpy Kent’s choice too. The “Lasso” team had the crowd record all the different versions, so that one exists somewhere. Ultimately, the one that made the cut came from star and co-creator Brendan Hunt, aka Coach Beard.
We also asked the guys if they’ve gotten the chants from fans in the street. The short answer is no, but for a few good reasons — and in Goldstein’s case, only one of those is due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’ve only really been outside the last month or so and I thought I’d be hidden in a mask. But it turns out these f—ing eyebrows are very recognizable,” Goldstein said. “But I think the upside is hopefully people are slightly scared of Roy Kent. So I’ve had people walk past me and go like, ‘I really enjoy the show.’ And I go (in Roy Kent voice), ‘Good’ and keep walking. I haven’t had people chanting at me in the street.”
That’s one way to be left alone. Sure works for Roy.
Dunster, who plays the more attention-hungry of the two soccer stars, is also not getting chanted at off-set, but “a lot” of parents have told him the incessant “Baby Shark” jingle has caused them “a lot of issues,” he told TheWrap. And he feels their pain, finding himself constantly singing the Jamie Tartt version: “I can’t get it out of my head,” Dunster said.
Watch the Roy Kent chant via the video at the top of this post and catch Jamie Tartt’s below.
New episodes of “Ted Lasso” Season 2 drop Fridays on Apple TV+.
