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While Ted Lasso referenced the late Anthony Head’s Rupert Mannion several times throughout season four, co-creator Brendan Hunt has revealed that the team considered bringing his character back in the season finale.
Head died from complications due to pneumonia in June, aged 72, after they had finished filming the fourth season of the Apple TV series.
Hunt, who also stars in and serves as an executive producer of the series, said in a new interview with Deadline that the team behind the show had hoped to include Head’s former AFC Richmond owner Rupert in the season finale posthumously, but it wasn’t possible.
“We had an outside hope of bringing him back in the last episode,” said Hunt. “We were told that that was not going to be possible. So yeah, we had an idea for a little thing but it was not going to happen.”
Head had been dealing with health issues before his death, but had kept them private.
Annette Badland, who played pub landlady Mae Green on the show, told Deadline last week: “I assumed he would be in this last [season], and didn’t know, as I think very few people knew he was ill and just couldn’t do it.”
Head’s character has been referenced several times in season four, which concluded on Wednesday, October 7. The show paid a special tribute to Head at the end of the penultimate episode of the season with an on-screen message that read: “In Memory of Anthony Head.”
His character has not been written out of the show, so if Ted Lasso does get renewed for season five, it’s possible Head’s death could be addressed within the context of the show.
Asked about how they will reflect Head’s death in the script, Hunt told Deadline: “I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t pass until after we shot everything, so we’ll have to figure that out when and if we get the chance to reconvene.”
As Rupert Mannion, Head made scattered appearances during the first two seasons, and joined as a series regular for season three.
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Head gained recognition in the U.K. in the Eighties through ads for Nescafé’s Gold Blend coffee, opposite Sharon Maughan, becoming known as the “Gold Blend Man.”
His breakthrough role came in 1997, when he was cast as librarian Rupert Giles in the hit teen sci-fi show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar in the title role.
Season four of Ted Lasso sees Jason Sudeikis’s eponymous soccer coach return to England to manage Richmond FC’s newly launched, second-division women’s team.
Head died just months after the death of his wife, Sarah Fisher. His daughters, actors Emily and Daisy Head, said he died “peacefully of complications due to pneumonia, surrounded by his family.”
“It has been, and forever will be, an honour and a privilege to be his daughters, and to have witnessed firsthand the impact both he and his work have had on so many,” their statement said.