The Illinois Shakespeare Festival announced the 2023 Actor Honor Roll inductee at the Bard Bash celebration on Sunday, August 6, 2023, at the Center for the Performing Arts Theatre on the campus of Illinois State University. The 2023 inductee is Ted Lasso creator, actor, writer, and producer Brendan Hunt.
Hunt was in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival company for four seasons. He began as an actor in Antony and Cleopatra in 1991. In 1992 and 1994, he worked as a carpenter, lighting technician, and lighting designer. In 1996, he appeared in The Tempest as Trinculo and Twelfth Night as the character Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
Hunt was a founding member of Theatre of Ted, an edgy weekly late night open mic show that continues today on the Illinois State campus. After graduating from Illinois State University in 1996, he studied and worked in his hometown of Chicago where he performed in comedy and improv clubs. He also was a member of two storefront theatres, Sleeping Dog Theatre and Wax Lips Theatre. In 1998, he began a long stint in Amsterdam where he honed his comedic talents working with Boom Chicago. In 2007, Hunt joined the Sacred Fools Theater Company in Los Angeles where he won a 2010 Ovation Award as a Lead Actor in a Musical in Savin’ Up for Saturday Night. He also enjoyed success as the lead actor and writer of Absolutely Filthy, a comic parody of Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comic strip. He won a LA Weekly Theater Award for the Best Male Performance in 2014 for that show.
Hunt’s television and film credits include Reno 911!, Parks and Recreation, Community, How I Met Your Mother, We’re the Millers, Bless This Mess, and Horrible Bosses 2. He garnered an Emmy nomination for his work on the Comedy Central series Key and Peele. He has worked as a voice actor for the video game Fallout 4, appeared in the Disney Channel series Dog with a Blog, Austin and Ally, and Kirby Buckets, and has been in several national commercials.
In 2013, Hunt co-wrote a Premier League advertising campaign for NBC Sports featuring himself as an assistant coach for Tottenham Hotspur with Jason Sudeikis. The commercials were named as the second-best TV soccer sketch by Paste with the magazine saying, “Brilliant though Sudeikis is, the unsung hero of these sketches is Brendan Hunt.” The campaign received a bronze award at the 2014 Sports Clio Awards.
The success of the advertising campaign led to the creation of the Apple TV+ hit series Ted Lasso that premiered in 2020. Hunt developed the series with Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, and Joe Kelly. In addition to playing coach Beard, Hunt is an executive producer and writer on the series. Hunt has won Emmy awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and Writing for a Comedy Series and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Ted Lasso has been nominated for 61 Emmy awards and has won 11.
Most recently Hunt has hosted the podcast After the Whistle with Rebecca Lowe covering the 2023 Women’s World Cup from New Zealand.
