Brett Goldstein Is Getting His Happily Ever After

The ‘Ted Lasso’ star has come across a few soulmates in this lifetime, but with the will-they-or-won’t-they rom-dram ‘All of You,’ Goldstein is finally getting the happy ending he’s earned.

It’s quite funny to witness Brett Goldstein at a loss for words. As Roy Kent in the series that made him famous, Goldstein has no shortage of expletives ready to fire off the tip of his tongue. In his HBO Original stand-up special, The Second Best Night of Your Life, the comedian spends 63 minutes talking about his hot mom, deliberating other couples’ sex lives, reframing Cookie Monster as an addict, and performing a wide-range of bits peppered with profanities, including an ode to his favorite word, “cunt.” But on a sunny July afternoon sitting across from me in a Starbucks on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, CA, Goldstein doesn’t quite know what to say.

The question that has him stumped: “Do you believe in happy endings?”

I’ve just pointed out to Goldstein that most, if not all, of the episodes of Ted Lasso that feature his writing credit are among the darkest of the series. “The Signal” (Season 2, Episode 6) features the happy-go-lucky football coach experiencing his first panic attack on the pitch. In “Tan Lines,” (Season 1, Episode 5) a heartbroken Ted ends things with his estranged wife who’s visiting with their son from Kansas. It’s super, super sad.

With Shrinking, the entire series is a roller-coaster of laugh-out-loud lines and painfully wrenching moments.The premise of the show—which Goldstein is co-creator of and has been a writer on since the first episode—is sad from the get-go (“For a year, [Segel’s character] has neglected his daughter, in the worst time. And it’s over the course of three seasons, fixing that,” Goldstein explains), but when Goldstein joins Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, Michael Urie, and Lukita Maxwell on-screen in season 2, the mood takes a real dive.

“That’s really very funny,” Goldstein finally says, after a series of “that’s really…” false starts. “You make a great point. When it comes to writing episodes, when it’s the really emotional sad ones I’m like, ‘I’ll do that one!’ But I do think that most of these things have mostly happy endings. Certainly in my 20s or whatever, the stuff I wrote was dark, dark, dark. And dark endings—everyone died in the end. Awful. Sort of, It’s cool to be bleak and all that.” But real-life experience has changed the now-45-year-old’s perspective—and writing. “I now think life is hard—I like to give people some hope,” he explains. “But I like the idea of earning it. I think a happy ending is great, and I think we all deserve having happy endings. You just want it to have been earned by the storytelling so it is really satisfying, rather than cheesy. You know what I mean?”

Nothing puts this principle to the test more than Goldstein’s new project, All of You. Set in a not-so-distant future, the story follows Simon (Goldstein) and Laura (Imogen Poots), two best friends who are maybe meant to be more, who grapple with their fractured paths after Laura takes The Test to determine the identity of her soulmate. Spoiler: It’s not Simon. Despite leaning on a familiar rom-com trope (See: When Harry Met Sally), it’s more rom-dram, or, as I suggest to Goldstein, perhaps a rom-trag. “It’s got jokes, though,” he says, laughing. “It’s a funny rom-trag.”

While the film doesn’t draw from one relationship or specific experience in Goldstein’s life (“I never keep a journal, and I know I should, people say that,” he says with a shrug. “But I always think [my life] is in all my stuff. Everything I write, you go, ‘I know what was going on at that time.’ Well, you wouldn’t, but I do.”), the story is the result of an ongoing fascination he shares with co-writer and director Will Bridges. “It’s 10 years worth of thoughts about love and the idea of ‘can one person be your everything?’” Goldstein explains. “In the culture of monogamy, that’s such a huge ask for someone to be your everything, and kind of unfair to put it all in one person.”

The question of soulmates is one he’s clearly infatuated with. He mentions soulmates in his stand-up special; it’s a funny plot point in an episode of Ted Lasso; and All of You is actually born from an AMC series he did with Bridges in 2020 called, what else, Soulmates, which features six couples dealing with the consequences of taking a soulmate test in standalone episodes (if that synopsis is giving Black Mirror, Bridges has written for that anthology series as well) and was a follow up to a short film For Life that Goldstein describes as basically the opening scene of All of You introducing audiences to the idea of The Test. “We kept coming back to that short, and we kept thinking, Well, what happened to that? That was the best expression of this idea. Really, the soulmate test could be anything. It’s a metaphor: It’s religion; it’s destiny; any of the things that we make huge decisions on.”

“Do I believe in soulmates?” Goldstein sits back and considers the question. “I change my mind. I honestly don’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I’m not sure there’s one person for everyone. I think there’s 50 people for everyone. I think in your lifetime there are probably 50 people that you should have met. That doesn’t mean you’ll have sex with, but there’s some karmic connection, over millennia. You know what I mean?”

So far, he’s come across a few in this lifetime. Roy Kent is one—“Roy was a soulmate of a role,” he says—another is his co-star, Imogen Poots. The two share the screen in All of You for nearly 90 percent of the film totally alone, relying on their dynamic to drive the tension and carry the storyline. It works. “I had it with fucking Imogen, in the film,” he explains of said karmic connection. “The film lives and dies on the gap between the two of us. I didn’t know Imogen; I had never met Imogen. And we had a Zoom, and within five minutes I honestly felt like I’d known her forever. She felt like an old friend, and that’s what these characters are. So I was like, ‘That’s gotta be it.’ And it was easy–I knew we had to build chemistry to do this. [But] we didn’t have to do anything, it just was there. It was magic.”

For Poots’s part, she says she and Goldstein, “were just always deeply connected from the start. These things are sort of mystifying really, but sometimes you just have a real natural synergy with a person.” That mystifying magic is what made the on-screen connection so real–and spellbinding to watch. “We just like being around one another. Working alongside a person that wants the best for you, who pushes you to go further because they know you can, is one of the great rewards of collaboration. That honesty. I like to think we were that for one another. He’s just an incredibly sensitive actor, unselfish and totally present.”

While the journey of getting this particular story told might have a happy ending, for Goldstein himself, one could argue, his story is just hitting its crescendo. In the spring, he stars opposite Jennifer Lopez in the Netflix romantic comedy Office Romance. (“The rom-com is a rom-com, and happy,” promises Goldstein, who also co-wrote the flick. “I’m trying to think if there’s a sad bit. No, I think you’ll be happy with that one.”) When I ask if he’s ready for this next chapter—one that, thanks to a buzzy project on the most popular streaming service alongside one of the most famous women in the world, means he’s almost certainly going to become even more widely recognized—he is almost charmingly confused. And again, I get to see Goldstein, who looks so remarkably like an off-duty Roy Kent today with his signature beard, black tee, and skinny jeans, uncharacteristically struggling for words.

“I don’t know. I think that, in terms of: Will I be recognized more in the street? I mean, possibly. I mean, Ted Lasso seems to be big. And I’m sure it will… I mean, how many more people? How much more? I can’t judge that. Who knows?” he gets out.

“Not something that you’re thinking about,” I supply.

“If you want me to have a panic attack,” he laughs uncomfortably. He doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, but all the things that come with the celebrity part of this aren’t his thing. “I’m the luckiest man in the world, and I’m doing exactly what I want to. I’m also a very private person, and it’s complicated.”

When I bring up that there are rumors about him dating Lopez swirling around the most gossipy corners of the internet (gotta love on-set paparazzi photos taken out of context!), Goldstein’s response is decidedly more resigned. “Yeah, that sort of thing isn’t my favorite,” he says slowly. “It’s near impossible, but, ideally, you just don’t look at any of that stuff because it will make you very uncomfortable. And maybe I should just be flattered that anyone could think that that would be a thing, you know what I mean?”

The other big one running the rumor mill: Marvel. After a cameo as Hercules in the end-credits scene of Thor: Love and Thunder sent fans into a frenzy, can we expect him to re-enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

“I honestly have heard nothing,” he whispers as if the Marvel gods themselves are listening, ready to crash down at the first hint of a broken NDA. “That is the truth,” he says, returning to his normal half-Roy pitch. “But I also would’ve said that if that wasn’t the truth.”

“People are extremely excited,” I goad.

“Well, that’s nice. But I’ve heard nothing. I’m extremely busy.” He laughs.

That he is. Goldstein is about to head to the U.K. to start filming the surprise fourth season of Ted Lasso. For him, it’s like a homecoming. “It’ll be nice. It’s been three years since we’ve actually filmed together?” he wonders aloud. “Probably. I keep imagining the set and feeling at home.” 

“Do you know if you’re writing a lot of episodes this season?” I follow up quickly. “Should we be prepared to be sad, is what I’m asking.”

“I am co-writing an episode with Jamie Lee,” he says with a grin. “It’s definitely an emotional episode, but will that emotion be happy? It’s possible. I’m very excited about that episode. All I can say is, I’m very excited about it. Does that mean it’s sad? Probably.”

Last Time You Cried?

Watching Home on a plane

Last Thing You Do Before You Fall Asleep?

Try not to look at my phone.

Email Sign-Off?

Thanks very much, Brett.

Last show you binge watched?

The White Lotus.

Bagel order?

I don’t eat bread.

First crush?

Jennifer Connelly.

Name your favorite Hollywood Jason.

Jason and the Argonauts. Nice try. 

Favorite movie couple?

Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now.

Gig you didn’t get but wish you had?

There was one part that I felt passionately that i should be playing…and i didn’t get it. Anyway, the show turned out to be shit, so that was a lucky escape! I do believe if it’s meant for you, it will come.

Favorite word?

C*nt.

First photo in your favorites album?

A ‘Films to Be Buried With’ [cover photo] of Kyle MacLachlan. I love Kyle MacLachlan.

Define “chips.”

French fries.

“All of You” will stream globally on Apple TV+ on September 26th.

Via: InStyle