From Theatre to the Pitch: Rex Hayes on Joining Ted Lasso's New Generation

Image credits: Photographer: David Reiss; Styling: Luci Ellis; Grooming: Terri Capon. Fashion credits: cardigan by Geordie Campbell; vest by Sunspel; trousers by Studio Nicholson; shoes by G. H. Bass.

For Rex, joining Ted Lasso as part of the new generation of Richmond players carries a feeling of disbelief, in stepping into a world they once only knew from the outside. Before becoming an actor, before theatre became a defining part of their career, football was something they had wanted to pursue themselves. Now, years into their professional life, they find themselves pulling on football boots again, only this time under the lights and in front of cameras, as part of one of television’s most beloved fictional football clubs.

“It felt very special,” they say. “It felt very significant. I felt very emotional.”

The emotion is not solely about joining a successful television series. Rex had watched Ted Lasso before joining it. Like millions of viewers, they had already formed an attachment to its characters, its humour and its peculiar ability to make football feel like a medium for stories about people rather than inherently a sport. Stepping onto the Richmond pitch therefore meant crossing an unusual perimeter, from spectator to participant. There was also something substantially personal about it. Rex had wanted to play football professionally as a child, but never had the opportunity. Years later, acting has unexpectedly given them another route into the game.

“I wanted to be one when I was a kid,” they explained. “And I didn’t get the opportunity because there wasn’t a team for me at the time.”

The tension is almost too sophisticated. The child who could not find the football team they needed eventually found themselves inside one of television’s most recognisable football worlds. And perhaps that is why the experience carries such emotional weight for them. When asked what their younger self would make of the life they have ended up having, Rex does not hesitate.

“All the time,” they say. “Football is theatre and theatre is football. A group of people sit in a space and watch on from beginning to end without knowing what the outcome will be. Some people are left elated, some are bereft and sometimes it leaves you feeling nothing. But something has happened in that time frame and the feeling of electricity in both forms is the same.”

For Rex, the connection between the two disciplines is more than an analogy. It is the reason they fell in love with both.

“I think that’s why I fell in love with them both - it’s the same feeling. It’s unmatched.” There is something almost circular about their journey. Football was the life they once imagined. Theatre became the profession they built. Now acting has brought them back to football, allowing them to inhabit a version of the world they once hoped to enter.

“I think my younger self would be in awe of the life I’m currently living. What a privilege it is to get to do the job I’ve always wanted to do, and now play the part of a life I once dreamed of living. It’s so rare to get the best of both worlds and I feel like I’m exactly where I should be. My inner child is proud of how it became possible to do it all.”

Image credits: Photographer: David Reiss; Styling: Luci Ellis; Grooming: Terri Capon. Fashion credits: cardigan by Geordie Campbell; vest by Sunspel; trousers by Studio Nicholson; shoes by G. H. Bass.

And yet Rex’s journey into Ted Lasso is not simply a story about football. Their professional foundation is theatre, a discipline they describe as their first love. Moving between the stage and television has therefore required them to develop a different kind of performance muscle.

The difference, they said, is not necessarily in the performance itself, however, it is in the endurance. Theatre demands a concentrated commitment. You step onto a stage, perform the story in real time and, when the curtain closes, the performance is over. Television operates differently. The hours are longer and the work is quite fragmented. An actor may perform a scene and then wait for hours before being called upon again. “You’ve always got to be ready and be on,” they say. Learning how to conserve energy, reset and return to a scene with the same level of presence has become an important part of the transition.

Another lesson television has taught them is letting go. In theatre, an actor experiences the entire performance. Choices are made in the moment and the actor can feel the audience responding in real time. On a television set, however, the final work continues to exist beyond the actor’s control. Once filming ends, the material moves into editing, sound, music, post-production and a host of other processes. “You’re used to being able to do everything in the moment,” Rex says. “With television, that’s not the same. There’s so much more that’s bigger than you.”

For an actor accustomed to owning the moment, learning to trust the machinery around the performance can be its own form of discipline. Perhaps that is also what makes Ted Lasso feel so close to theatre for them. The series has always carried a particular theatricality. Its characters are heightened, its dialogue often moves at an unusual pattern, and its humour depends heavily on ensemble chemistry. That quality becomes especially important when introducing a new group of players.

Rex plays Siobhan, one half of a twin pairing with Niamh, played by Aisling Sharkey. The sisters arrive with an energy that almost unsettles the locker room's established order. Siobhan is passionate, disruptive and difficult to contain. But Rex is careful not to reduce that disruption to simple troublemaking.

There is something at the core of it: intensity without direction. Ted’s influence becomes important because they do not simply attempt to suppress that energy. Instead, they help redirect it, turning passion that once disrupted training and team dynamics into something constructive, both on and off the pitch.

That idea is central to the show’s enduring appeal. Football is important, but Ted Lasso has rarely been only about football. The pitch is where the characters reveal themselves, but the real story happens in the relationships surrounding it. The new season carries that same philosophy into women’s football. Rex describes the new group of players as possessing the same qualities that made audiences fall in love with the original Richmond team. They are new characters, but the emotional architecture remains familiar: ambition, insecurity, friendship, rivalry, vulnerability and the complicated process of becoming part of something larger than yourself.

What changes is the sporting context. The new season places women’s football at the centre of the story, opening the door to realities that audiences who have not closely followed the women’s game may not have encountered. The growth of women’s football has been enormous, but that growth has not erased the structural problems beneath it. Funding remains uneven. Injury research has historically failed to account adequately for women’s bodies. Access to football remains shaped by age, gender and opportunity. For Rex, these questions are personal. Their connection to football did not begin on a television set. In recent years, they played grassroots football with Victoria Park Vixens, an experience that gave them an appreciation for the role grassroots clubs play in creating access to the game later in life.

For many women and non-binary players, particularly those from generations in which opportunities were limited, grassroots football becomes a second chance. Rex once wanted to become a footballer but did not have the opportunity. Now, through acting, Rex has found themselves in a position where they can help tell stories about people who are fighting for the opportunity to play. That makes the season’s representation especially significant to them. Rex knows what it means to want a place in football without being able to see a route towards it.

“What’s so special about this season is that not only will people see themselves represented for maybe the first time on such an international platform, but also the hurdles it took to get there,” they say. “This season doesn’t open with an already established team struggling to rise through the ranks; you meet us at the beginning of our journey already facing adversity - a tiny cupboard of a locker room, significant funding disparities, childcare issues to name just a few.” The significance lies not only in seeing women’s football represented, but in seeing the obstacles that exist before the players ever reach the pitch. “This season shows the battle that players in women’s football face before they’ve even got on the pitch, and that representation is all the more important when you then get to see those players play the game.”

Image credits: Photographer: David Reiss; Styling: Luci Ellis; Grooming: Terri Capon. Fashion credits: cardigan by Geordie Campbell; vest by Sunspel; trousers by Studio Nicholson; shoes by G. H. Bass.

Representation is often discussed as a question of who appears on screen. But there is another dimension to it, which is, who gets to imagine themselves participating in the world being represented. A young viewer watching the new Richmond team is not simply seeing another group of fictional characters. They may be seeing a version of football in which they can locate themselves.

Before filming began, Rex and the rest of the new team underwent an intensive football boot camp. The training served the obvious practical purpose of making the players believable on screen, but it also created something less tangible: a team before the cameras ever started rolling. For actors, that kind of preparation is unusual. Often, performers meet one another around a read-through or on the first day of shooting. Here, the cast had the opportunity to train together, learn one another’s rhythms and gradually become a football team before they had to pretend to be one.

For Rex, it also meant returning to something they already knew. They came into the boot camp with grassroots experience and some football ability already in their locker. The preparation was therefore less about learning an entirely foreign physical language and more about refining it for the demands of television. That disparity matters because football on screen has to work twice. It has to look convincing to the camera, but it also has to feel authentic to people who actually understand the sport.

The performance cannot simply be an actor pretending to play football. The movement, timing, confidence and chemistry have to communicate the illusion that these people belong on the pitch. That is perhaps the most interesting thread connecting Rex’s theatre background to their football role. Both require them to inhabit a world convincingly. On stage, that might mean standing in front of hundreds of people and allowing them to believe in a character for two hours. On the football pitch, it means convincing an audience that the person running down the wing is not an actor who learned the choreography a few weeks earlier, but a player who belongs there. The more secure the physical language becomes, the more space an actor has to concentrate on the person rather than the performance. That is particularly important for a show like Ted Lasso, where the strongest moments often arrive when the characters stop feeling like fictional constructions and start feeling like people.

Rex’s entry into Richmond therefore carries several stories at once: the actor is moving from theatre into television and the football fan stepping onto the pitch. There is also the child who once wanted to play professionally finally getting a version of the opportunity they imagined and the grassroots player is finding themselves inside a global television production. And of course, there is the performer becoming part of a new ensemble tasked with carrying forward a world audiences already love. The most compelling part may be that none of these identities cancel the others out. They converge, and perhaps that is what makes their arrival at Richmond feel less like a career detour and more like a strange piece of unfinished business finally finding its way back around.