Lessons from Brett Goldstein

Lessons from Brett Goldstein

Brett Goldstein is an actor, comedian, and writer best known for playing Roy Kent on Ted Lasso and asking podcast guests to discuss death through their favorite movies. He built his career writing scripts and performing stand-up in London comedy clubs. This profile gathers his direct thoughts on writing, comedy, and emotion.

Part 1: Comedy and Stand-up

1. On shared depravity: "If you laugh, either I'm not insane and we all feel this way or I am insane, but it's okay, you're still going to accept me amongst the human community." — Source: [Interview Magazine]
2. On the purpose of stand-up: "Stand-up is a way to share a worldview that is simultaneously funny, embarrassing, awful, tragic, and depressing." — Source: [Mo Welch YouTube Channel]
3. On audience connection: "Doing material you have written allows you to cultivate a specific shared intimacy with the crowd that acting in someone else's script does not always provide." — Source: [Late Night with Seth Meyers]
4. On British versus American humor: "British humor is often rooted in failure and status anxiety, whereas American comedy has more room for optimism and directness." — Source: [Fly on the Wall Podcast]
5. On starting in London clubs: "The grimy open mics of London teach you how to fail quietly and how to hold a room that actively dislikes you." — Source: [The Drawing Room]
6. On returning to the stage: "After Ted Lasso, returning to the stage meant dealing with an audience that expected Roy Kent, forcing me to re-establish my own comedic voice." — Source: [Good One Podcast]
7. On masculinity in comedy: "Exploring themes like sex and masculinity requires leaning into the embarrassment of how much men do not know what they are doing." — Source: [HBO The Second Best Night of Your Life]
8. On his comedic persona: "My name is Brett Goldstein, I am a comedian, an actor, a writer, a director, a candlestick maker... a swimmer, a plumber." — Source: [Films to Be Buried With]
9. On bombing: "You have to bomb to understand the mechanics of a joke; a joke is not finished until it has failed in front of a live audience." — Source: [Awards Radar]
10. On creative persistence: "The entertainment business is mostly a game of surviving rejection long enough to get lucky once." — Source: [The Drawing Room]

Part 2: Ted Lasso and Roy Kent

1. On pitching himself as Roy Kent: "I recorded a self-tape in my kitchen and emailed it to the producers with a note saying, 'If this is shit, pretend you never received it.'" — Source: [Jimmy Kimmel Live]
2. On Roy Kent's voice: "It’s a manifestation of the fact that he is covering feelings that he cannot let out. He has to keep his voice almost like a cork and hold everything down." — Source: [Reddit AMA]
3. On emotional suppression: "If Roy Kent let his feelings out, he would be a total wreck; the anger is a lid on deep sadness and insecurity." — Source: [Brené Brown Podcast]
4. On the CGI conspiracy: "I found it genuinely hilarious when the internet became convinced Roy Kent was a computer-generated character." — Source: [Jimmy Kimmel Live]
5. On fan interactions: "Ted Lasso fans love to tell Brett Goldstein to f*k off." — Source: [The Tonight Show]*
6. On athletic retirement: "Athletes face a unique death when they have to retire in their thirties; Roy's anger comes from losing the only identity he ever had." — Source: [Collider]
7. On playing Roy forever: "I would happily play Roy Kent for the rest of my life if I were allowed to." — Source: [The Late Show with Stephen Colbert]
8. On the transition to coaching: "Roy coaching is about him realizing his value lies in his understanding of the game and the people playing it, rather than his physical ability." — Source: [Coup De Main Magazine]
9. On the character's baseline: "Tell the truth: He’s fine. That’s it. Nothing wrong with that, most people are fine." — Source: [Coup De Main Magazine]

Part 3: The Craft of Writing

1. On being in the writers' room: "Writing on Ted Lasso meant figuring out the emotional truth of a scene before finding the jokes." — Source: [The Hollywood Reporter]
2. On authorial intent: "You can write a line with a specific intention, but an actor might deliver it in a way that changes the meaning entirely, and you have to be open to that." — Source: [Interview Magazine]
3. On creating Shrinking: "The goal was to explore grief in a way that acknowledges how messy and frequently hilarious people are when they are in pain." — Source: [Variety]
4. On collaboration: "Writing is a team sport; the best ideas usually come from someone else fixing a bad idea you threw out there to break the silence." — Source: [Esquire]
5. On writing romance: "Writing Soulmates allowed me to look at how technology intersects with the fundamental human anxiety of wondering if we chose the right partner." — Source: [NPR]
6. On script structure: "Every character needs a specific flaw that they are actively trying to hide from the rest of the cast." — Source: [Good One Podcast]
7. On editing: "Writing is mostly cutting; if a joke does not advance the plot or reveal character, it has to go, no matter how funny it is." — Source: [Vulture]
8. On finding the tone: "A show has to earn its emotional moments; you cannot drop drama into a comedy without doing the character work first." — Source: [Collider]
9. On finishing a script: "A script is never really finished; it gets taken away from you when it is time to start shooting." — Source: [Awards Radar]

Part 4: Cinema and "Films to Be Buried With"

1. On the premise of his podcast: "Telling guests they have died strips away pretense and allows them to talk about their lives without the standard press-tour filter." — Source: [Podcast Review]
2. On movies as identity: "The films we love act as emotional markers; they tell us more about who we were when we watched them than about the films themselves." — Source: [Global Player]
3. On horror films: "People who love horror often do so because it allows them to experience anxiety in a controlled environment where the threat eventually ends." — Source: [Wave]
4. On the film that makes you cry: "Asking someone what movie makes them cry is a shortcut to figuring out what their core emotional wound is." — Source: [Mashable]
5. On objective quality versus subjective love: "You can acknowledge that a film is technically terrible while still arguing it is the most important movie in your life." — Source: [Pod Bible Mag]
6. On rewatching movies: "We rewatch movies not for the plot, but for the comfort of knowing exactly how we are going to feel for the next two hours." — Source: [Clandestine Critic]
7. On the afterlife: "Framing the podcast around death makes conversations about cinema inherently philosophical." — Source: [The Young Folks]
8. On the Muppets: "I consider The Muppet Christmas Carol to be a perfect piece of cinema that operates on multiple levels of genius." — Source: [Films to Be Buried With]
9. On comedy in film: "A comedy film that does not hold up on a second viewing was not actually a good movie; it was a collection of surprises." — Source: [iHeart]
10. On the one film to take to heaven: "The final choice guests make usually reflects how they want to feel for eternity, not what they think is the best film." — Source: [Apple Podcasts]

Part 5: Vulnerability and Emotion

1. On showing vulnerability: "It’s hard to let people see you vulnerable; I fxxxing hate it. But that’s the great part of life and love and relationships." — Source: [The Mary Sue]
2. On male anger: "Anger is often the easiest, most socially acceptable way for men to express sadness or fear." — Source: [Brené Brown Podcast]
3. On grief: "You do not move on from grief; you just learn to carry it around in a different pocket." — Source: [Variety]
4. On crying at art: "Crying at art is a safe way to process the emotions you are too afraid to deal with in your actual life." — Source: [Mashable]
5. On self-worth: "The hardest thing for many people to accept is that they are deserving of love exactly as they are, without having to achieve anything first." — Source: [GQ]
6. On therapy: "Going to therapy is essentially learning how to be a better writer of your own internal monologue." — Source: [Films to Be Buried With]
7. On fear of failure: "The fear never goes away, but you eventually realize that failing will not actually kill you." — Source: [Interview Magazine]
8. On holding back: "Keeping your feelings locked down works in the short term, but it rots you from the inside out over the long term." — Source: [Esquire]
9. On empathy: "True empathy requires suspending your own judgment long enough to figure out why someone else's bad behavior makes sense to them." — Source: [Collider]
10. On emotional intelligence: "Understanding your own absurdity is the first step toward forgiving the absurdity of everyone else." — Source: [Films to Be Buried With]

Part 6: Acting and the Creative Process

1. On separating writing and acting: "When I am acting, I try to completely forget that I was in the writers' room, trusting the director to guide the scene." — Source: [The Hollywood Reporter]
2. On physical comedy: "A lot of character work comes down to how a person carries their physical weight; Roy Kent walks like his knees are made of glass." — Source: [Variety]
3. On auditioning: "Sending the blind self-tape for Roy Kent was an act of desperation because I knew I would regret it forever if I did not try." — Source: [Jimmy Kimmel Live]
4. On trusting the script: "Good acting is often getting out of the way of good writing." — Source: [Vulture]
5. On finding the character: "You find the character in the quiet moments, in how they react to someone else talking, rather than what they are saying themselves." — Source: [Collider]
6. On ensemble casts: "A cast only works if everyone is willing to pass the ball; if someone is trying to steal the scene, the whole rhythm dies." — Source: [Coup De Main Magazine]
7. On his Emmy win: "I’d love to pretend this wasn’t a big deal. But it really was a big fxxxing deal." — Source: [Reddit AMA]
8. On playing Hercules: "Stepping into the Marvel Cinematic Universe required a massive physical transformation, but the mental adjustment to the scale of the production was the hardest part." — Source: [Variety]
9. On breaking character: "I struggle to keep a straight face on set when working with comedians who know exactly how to push my specific buttons." — Source: [Good One Podcast]

Part 7: Fame, Success, and Industry

1. On sudden fame: "Becoming famous in your forties is much better than in your twenties because you already know who you are and you know it is all a bit silly." — Source: [Esquire]
2. On being recognized: "It is strange to go from being completely invisible to having people yell profanities at you across a grocery store out of love." — Source: [The Tonight Show]
3. On imposter syndrome: "Even after winning awards, there is a lingering fear that someone is going to tap you on the shoulder and say a mistake was made." — Source: [GQ]
4. On staying grounded: "Continuing to do stand-up keeps you honest because the audience does not care what awards you have won if your current joke is not funny." — Source: [Late Night with Seth Meyers]
5. On taking meetings: "Most Hollywood meetings are people agreeing that a project sounds great until someone actually has to pay for it." — Source: [Fly on the Wall Podcast]
6. On creative control: "True success in television is getting a show made without having to compromise its central soul." — Source: [The Hollywood Reporter]
7. On the impact of Ted Lasso: "The show succeeded because it arrived at a time when people were desperate for proof that kindness could be entertaining." — Source: [NPR]
8. On dealing with critics: "You have to ignore both the extreme praise and the extreme criticism, because neither is entirely true." — Source: [Interview Magazine]
9. On career pacing: "It takes a very long time to become an overnight success." — Source: [Awards Radar]

Part 8: Philosophy and Worldview

1. On holding opposing thoughts: "You have to be able to look at the world and see it as funny, embarrassing, awful, tragic, and depressing all at the exact same time." — Source: [Mo Welch YouTube Channel]
2. On human connection: "Most of what we do in art and comedy is an attempt to confirm we are not completely alone in our heads." — Source: [Films to Be Buried With]
3. On aging: "Getting older is mostly about realizing how little you actually understand, and being okay with that lack of understanding." — Source: [Esquire]
4. On pessimism versus optimism: "I lean naturally toward pessimism, which makes moments of genuine joy feel earned and surprising." — Source: [Brené Brown Podcast]
5. On legacy: "If you spend your life worrying about how you will be remembered, you will likely forget to actually live it." — Source: [Podcast Review]
6. On ordinary lives: "Most of life happens in the mundane middle ground, not the extreme highs or lows." — Source: [Coup De Main Magazine]
7. On absurdity: "Embracing the absurdity of existence is the only logical response to a universe that does not make any sense." — Source: [Global Player]
8. On kindness: "Kindness requires actual effort and energy; it is an active choice you have to make every day, whereas cynicism is lazy." — Source: [Variety]
9. On the end: "When it is all over, the only thing that really matters is the way you treated the people who were unlucky enough to know you." — Source: [Films to Be Buried With]