Nate is a "troubled soul": "Ted Lasso" star Nick Mohammed on his character's dark turn

Nick Mohammed exploded onto the global stage as Nathan "Nate the Great" Shelley in the Apple TV+ comedy "Ted Lasso." He picked up an Emmy Award nomination and celebrated multiple Emmy Award wins with his cast mates. Now in its third season, Nate's "Ted Lasso" storyline brilliantly encompasses reasons to both celebrate him and wish for his demise — with the poisonous side of social media being one of the reasons.

"I try and stay off Twitter when the show is out because otherwise there's too much of an element of art imitating life because people are really hating on Nate at the moment and rightly so," Mohammed explained to me on "Salon Talks" about his real-life social media habits. "If I start to scroll on Twitter, I'm like, I know that's what Nate does in Season 2, so I should stop." 

Nate's own insecurities, his inability to convey his feelings to his once-hero Ted and his toxic relationship with his father all led him to feeling abandoned and eventually blowing his life up. Social media is where Nate receives positive feedback and praise. We see the ramifications begin to play out right now in the show's third season.

Watch my "Salon Talks" episode with Nick Mohammed here or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about how "Ted Lasso" completely changed Mohammed's acting career and insights about the cast, like who is the most athletic and the most American thing about Jason Sudeikis.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Where are you at right now? 

At home in London. We just had a little baby daughter a couple of weeks ago, so I can't be with the cast in the states at the moment.

Congratulations. Is this your first kid?

No, actually our third.

I can get some lessons from you. I have one daughter, she's three years old. She runs my house.

Yes. We got two boys as well. We're very lucky.

Congratulations and congrats on the new season. Are you ever surprised by the show's success?

Constantly, yes. I find it just quite overwhelming really. I still am trying to get used to the fact that people recognize me in the street and want to talk about it, in particular Nate's storyline. It's quite mad. 

"Ted Lasso" is known for being wholesome and inspiring us to see the greater good. We see that in Nate's arc, especially when he got his promotion. But Nate kind of went dark in Season 2. What can we look forward to in Season 3?

We know that Nate has defected from AFC Richmond and he has joined West Ham, the rival team, and Rupert is his boss. We all know that Rupert is not a leader of people. He's a very toxic force in everyone's lives, and so I think we can anticipate that it's not going to be plain sailing for Nate being under Rupert's commands. And obviously there's unfinished business between Nate and Ted, Nate and AFC Richmond, even Nate and his dad.

Not that I condone Nate's actions in Season 2, but I feel like you can see where they're coming from. You can see that they ultimately stem from a toxic relationship he has with his dad and these deep-seated insecurities that he's had his whole life. He's not a different person. He's the same person. He's just been given a little bit more power and he's chosen sadly, to use that power in quite sort of bullish ways. There's quite a lot of reckoning to be had in Season 3

What was it like when you first got that script?

I remember really just distinctly getting the first episode and thinking, "Ooh, I wonder if they're going to redeem Nate." And then I read it and I was like, "Nah, they're doubling down on how nasty he is. That's good." But it's thrilling and it's really exciting reading those scripts and following everyone else's storylines too because I'm a genuine fan of the show as much as anyone else.

The relationship between Ted and Nate was beautiful, and some fans were even angry that Nate left Ted, but Ted also wasn't being the person that Nate needed him to be. Do you feel like Ted's getting what he deserves?

Well, it's interesting, isn't it? I think Nate says at the end of Season 2 that he feels abandoned. He feels abandoned by Ted, but Ted is actually sort of blissfully unaware of Nate's downfall until end of Dpisode 11 when he finds out that he's said to the press about Ted having panic attacks. 

Nate's behavior is completely out of order, but because Nate has never had a father figure in his life, he doesn't really have a support network. He doesn't really have friends, he doesn't have a girlfriend, boyfriend. When Ted did come into his life in Season 1, we saw how it empowered him and made him feel worthwhile. Obviously that resulted in him being promoted and that was the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

I guess from Ted's point of view, he feels like, oh, Nate is not fixed, but his work is done as it were. But actually Nate is a lot needier sadly than that and is a troubled soul. He's not getting the praise that he once had. He has more responsibilities. He doesn't really know how to use that power 'cause he's never had any before. It's a real recipe for disaster for Nate because he just doesn't really have the emotional intelligence to deal with any of it.

That's the problem with these big personalities like Ted, right? If you make everybody feel so good and you make everybody feel seen and cared for, and then the minute you start to have these human moments where you can't be the biggest cheerleader or the person who lights up every room, people can easily feel slighted.

Completely. And Ted, bless him, has got his own demons. He's got his own personal things to deal with and his family life is obviously fractured. He's dealing with panic attacks and anxiety. He's got to concentrate on it himself and that's why, so it is such a shame that Nate sees that as abandonment where actually it's just he should be looking out for Ted, really, but he's not.

And then Twitter isn't helping Nate at all.

No. That's why I try and stay off Twitter when the show is out because otherwise there's too much of an element of art imitating life because people are really hating on Nate at the moment and rightly so. If I start to scroll on Twitter, I'm like, I know that's what Nate does in Season 2, so I should stop.

"Ted Lasso" is a feel-good show, but your character is polarizing to fans. Is it a challenge to play a guy who so many fans take issue with?

If anything, honestly, it's been really thrilling. It was challenging in a sense that I felt like Season 1 Nate, I knew what I was doing, The scripts are brilliant and I'm just indebted to the scripts because they've written such a really nuanced arc and really sort of slowly drip fed throughout the three seasons. I felt like I had some kind of comfort area in the way I was portraying Nate in Season 1, but a lot of the comedy to be fair was replaced by more emotional and dramatic storytelling in Season 2 and in Season 3 now that he's taken a slightly darker turn. That was more challenging just because I had less experience in that.

Well, I think the character who has the ability to do that is always going to be the one that's remembered.

That's very kind. Well, yeah, we'll see. See what you think at the end of Season 3.

"Ted Lasso" has mastered the balance between humor and drama. What's the secret?

Theo Park [the casting director] has done a phenomenal job. It's also just the loveliest bunch of people. We feel so lucky to go into work and get to work with these just brilliant people, but also just wonderful humans. 

I feel like the scripts, we just owe it all to the scripts. The writing and the writing team, they're just phenomenal. To be able to play a supporting role in an ensemble show that gets to go through proper character development is quite rare or certainly rare in UK shows. In terms of my previous experience, often if you're playing a supporting role, you are the constant in the show and your major players are the ones who bounce off you and they get to develop and grow. 

It's not just Nate in "Ted Lasso." It's every character gets their own story. I just think the writing somehow still manages to balance that tightrope of delivering on, well, comedy — first and foremost, it's a comedy — but like you say, emotional storytelling and dramatic storytelling as well. It really is a triple threat and I don't think that's an easy thing to do. Often one of those things would feel sacrificed, but they somehow managed to walk that tightrope. 

It's not easy, but it's real life because we don't laugh all the time. And if we're lucky, we're not crying all of the time. You have that balance, so it pulls at those emotional strings and gives you an opportunity to have a real experience.

Definitely. That's the other thing is that the characters feel, as a result of it not sort of shying away from an emotional moment when it needs to, and it never feels gratuitous, but it ultimately just makes it all feel realistic and it makes the characters feel real and that they've got depth. They're not just superficial characters that you might find in a poor sitcom. There's some sitcoms which do character development brilliantly. It feels like they've really got a hold of these characters and they feel like proper fleshed-out human beings.

It's been said that this may be the last season. Is that true?

I genuinely don't know. I've read all manner of things now. All I know is that nothing official has been said either way. I know that there was a bit of a frenzy online when Jason said, "Yeah, maybe," but he didn't say that it was ending. That there are so many different ways that it could go. I think they've been really open from the start in saying we always had a three-season arc for this particular story. This isn't a spoiler, but no one dies in it.

We want at least two more seasons, so we want to make sure you're down for two more seasons, just in case you get that phone call.

OK, OK. Well, I'll put that to them.

I'll read somewhere that you haven't spent that much time in America. Would you be willing to move to America to work on a television show?

My wife is in the background and she's nodding her head, so I guess, yeah. I mean we'd have to take the kids out of school, so it would be a big upheaval. But if it was the right kind of show, I don't think we'd say no. I like where we live, and it's nice to pop over to the States. I've not been many times to the States, but I've always loved it when I've gone over. 

I watch Mr. Swallow. I know "Ted Lasso" was developed by Americans, but a lot of your comedy career has been in the UK. Do you think there's a difference between American and British humor?

It's a really good question. I don't know is the answer. I mean, I feel like there are so many shows, I think you could look at it in a quite a black and white way and say, "Oh yeah, Americans don't get sarcasm," or something like that. But I mean, it's just nonsense because then you look at so many of the great American comedies which is sort of cynical and snide. All that British comedy is, I don't know, uptight and clipped or something, and socially awkward.

I feel like there's so much crossover now, not just in terms of lots of transatlantic productions, "Ted Lasso" being one of those obviously, "Intelligence," which is a show I write being another. There are shows, I guess quite quintessentially British, which do brilliantly over in the States and also shows that are quintessentially American that do brilliantly over here so I don't think it's black and white. I think actually if something's funny, I mean everyone can have different tastes within what they find particularly funny. But I think humor, comedy, it's just so universal. I think if something's funny, it's funny, yeah. And whether it's to your taste or not, that's a different matter. But I don't necessarily see it being defined by where you live.

I've worked on a television show and it was always two or three cast members that I like to hang out with after we finished those long filming days. Did you make any connections with anybody on the crew?

Oh, well, I mean, we're all a big unit. I mean, probably because "Ted Lasso" now we've been filming for the last three, four years. Particularly, we all went through the lockdown together. When we were filming Season 2, that was proper lockdown. We felt very lucky to be working, and they became our social bubble because you weren't allowed to be socializing outside of anything else like work. And so we are very, very close unit — cast and crew. Pretty much all the crew stayed from season one right through to the end.

When it came to those final few days, it was properly emotional because these people that you are sometimes seeing more than your own family when you're filming long hours and filming week on week and season on season. So yeah, it's a great bunch, but we're all still in touch. There's also WhatsApp groups, we all hang out for a drink, and obviously there's a lot of them who are in the States, but it's fun when we get together. It's always a laugh. I feel very lucky.

We know that Ted's the best dancer from the pilot, but who's the most athletic? 

Oh, interesting. It's probably someone like Phil Dunster or Christo, those footballers. I mean Billy, Toheeb, Kola, they're so great because also, and one thing I never really appreciated is that when you're filming those football sequences, they're doing take after take after take. And it's, I think, even more exhausting than actually playing a football match because you're kind of going at it full pelt for the camera and then they'll call cut and you have to stop, relax or retake or reset. It's almost like interval training, it's sort of stop, start, stop, start nature to it. The stamina that they have to build up for some of those long football shoots is something. 

Who's most like their character?

Oh, that's a good question. Jeremy [Swift], Higgins, Jerry and Higgins are very similar, I think really nice, nice people, both of them. Very nice people.

What's the most American thing that Jason does?

The most American thing he does is he's really into pinball machines.

I was scared you were going to say something like, he eats a donut sandwich. The show's amazing. Season 3 comes out [March 15]. What's next for you?

So I've just finished a show called "Renegade Now," which is on Disney+, not I think, not till October, to be fair. It's quite later on. And I shot a film last year called "Maggie Moore(s)" with John Hamm and Tina Fey, which I think is out in July, which John Slattery directed, who's brilliant and wonderful, so that was a real joy. I'm about to do some more live stuff as Mr. Swallow, which is like my alter ego on stage and might possibly bring that over to the States at some point.