Keeley Hazell claims that she was supposed to play Juno Temple‘s role in Ted Lasso.
If you forgot, Juno, 36, played Keeley Jones in award-winning Apple TV+ comedy series, which earned her three Emmy nominations.
In an excerpt from her new memoir Everyone’s Seen My Tits: Stories and Reflections From an Unlikely Feminist, Keeley, 38, claimed that show creator Jason Sudeikis, whom she also dated, originally wrote the role for her.
Keep reading to find out more…Keeley recalled meeting up with Jason, 49, “to discuss the part he had written for me,” according to the excerpt published by Us Weekly.
“He told me about the TV show. It was a football show set in England. It would film in London,” Keeley wrote. “J was going to play the lead, Ted, a cheery and optimistic American football coach who’d come to coach a British football (soccer) team, which, if you haven’t figured out, is an entirely different sport.”
She recalled, “The show hadn’t been picked up at this point, meaning, it was just a script waiting to be sold, but the idea of me being a lead in a TV show was enough to make me wet my pants with excitement. I auditioned. I auditioned again. According to J, I was at the top of the list, but casting wanted to see another scene. In the third and final round, J read with me.”
Eventually, Jason allegedly informed Keeley (via text) that she was going to be “offered another part” in the show.
“I felt like I’d been punched in the chest,” Keeley wrote. “Once I didn’t get cast as Keeley, I decided that acting could go f**k itself.”
Keeley had a brief stint as a producer on Love Island before taking on the small role of Bex in Ted Lasso.
She went on to write that she put on an “Oscar worthy” performance pretending to be “totally fine” with what went happened with her casting.
“It was better than my acting in the show, which was bad. Just awful,” she recalled. “Instead of using this as an opportunity to prove how good I was, I sabotaged myself on-screen with defiant disengagement.”
She also admitted that things were awkward for her as she was associated with Ted Lasso for having the same name as one of the main characters versus her actual work on the show.
“As for me? The only change I noticed was when I went to order some food and gave my name for the order and the server said, ‘Oh, Keeley, like the character from Ted Lasso!’” Keeley recalled. “He mistook my look of horror for confusion and then asked if I’d seen the show.”
She added, “That’s the other thing. While I was just someone who was ‘sort of famous for being almost famous,’ as Ted Lasso’s Keeley Jones liked to point out.”
As the character “defied the stereotype—proving that women can be multifaceted,” Keeley said she is someone who has stumbled and struggled and survived.”
“I get to play the greatest role of my lifetime — the Real Keeley, and here she f–king is,” Keeley wrote.
Find out which stars will be returning for season 4 of Ted Lasso and who’s leaving the show.