Did You Forget Ted Lasso Star Phil Dunster Was In Netflix's Short-Lived Dracula Series?
Even before he started kicking the ball downfield as Jamie Tartt in the Emmy-winning "Ted Lasso," Phil Dunster was kicking around the film and television industry as a working actor. Dunster is one of those faces that you might have already seen in a minor role somewhere and forgotten before he gained more visibility in "Ted Lasso." Who remembers his 2017 appearance, for instance, in Kenneth Branagh's star-studded film adaptation of "Murder on the Orient Express," where he played the father of a girl named Daisy (not to be confused with her governess, played by Daisy Ridley)?
With "Ted Lasso" now midway through its third season on Apple TV+, and Nicolas Cage currently chewing scenery and veins in theaters in Universal's wacko Dracula movie "Renfield," the unlikely Venn diagram of vampire movie fans, Phil Dunster stans, and supporters of the fictional soccer football team AFC Richmond has perhaps never had more overlap. That's presuming that "Renfield" and "Ted Lasso" are attracting some of the same viewers, which isn't a given, considering one is a horror comedy and the other is a sports dramedy.
To be clear, Dunster does not appear in "Renfield," but he does have another recent link to the Dracula mythos. That's right: even if the undead way and the Lasso Way are mutually exclusive, we'll always have Phil Dunster speaking with a Texas accent in Netflix and BBC One's bonkers "Dracula" miniseries.
In the series, Dunster plays the rich American cad Quincey Morris. Quincey is one of the three strapping young men who propose to Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker's original "Dracula" novel, but to discuss how he factors into the Netflix adaptation, we'll need to delve into spoilers for the third and final episode. So, if you haven't seen "Dracula," look away now unless you don't mind being spoiled.
'Are you a cowboy, Quincey?'
Adapted for the screen by "Sherlock" creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, "Dracula" stars Claes Bang ("The Northman," "The Square") as the titular vampire. As we noted in our Year of the Vampire entry on "Dracula" and other TV miniseries and standalone episodes that don't require an eternal bloody commitment time-wise, the whole second episode of "Dracula" is set aboard the Demeter ship. That puts it in fine company with another upcoming Universal horror flick, "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," which now has a trailer to get you psyched.
"Dracula" takes a hard left turn in its third episode, however, as Dracula's ship to England blows off course by 123 years, and he emerges from the bottom of the ocean into modern-day London. Quincey Morris isn't as big of a supporting character in this version of the story as he was in "Bram Stoker's Dracula," where he was played by Billy Campbell. The episode gives more screen time to Jack Seward (Matthew Beard), whose unrequited love for Lucy (Lydia West) sees him looking on hopelessly on the dancefloor as she and her gal pals show Quincey more attention, asking him if he's a cowboy. He says not really, no, and we know it's true because Phil Dunster is from Northampton, England, not Texas.
Vampires usually have long lives by virtue of immortality, but as a miniseries, "Dracula" was over and done with in three days on BBC One. It found a second life (as bloodsuckers tend to do) by streaming on Netflix, but even there, people are likely to binge-watch it and forget it soon thereafter. It's the kind of thing where if you go back and rewatch "Dracula" post-"Ted Lasso", you might be surprised to see Phil Dunster pop up as Quincey Morris.