How Jason Sudeikis' Goofy Dance Moves Got Him In The Cast Of Saturday Night Live
In 2003, Jason Sudeikis, one of the many alumni of the Second City comedy troupe who went on to be involved with "Saturday Night Live," was scouted while performing in Las Vegas. He was brought on to write "SNL" sketches, and joined the cast in 2005. Sudeikis was the show's go-to George W. Bush impersonator, as well as their Mitt Romney and occasional Joe Biden. While performing on "SNL," Sudeikis' career took off in earnest, and he began appearing on "30 Rock," "The Cleveland Show," and in many, many comedy films. Sudeikis has been in the public eye pretty constantly since 2005, and his profile has only grown since his departure from "SNL" in 2013. His most recent hit is the sports dramady "Ted Lasso," which he developed and stars in. To date, "Ted Lasso" has won eight Primetime Emmys. Sudeikis may be the only performer in history to win an Emmy and also be nominated for a Razzie (for his role as Batman in "Movie 43") and a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for Most Wanted Pet (for his role in "The Angry Birds Movie").
"Ted Lasso" is about an American college football coach who is unexpectedly tapped to lead AFC Richmond, an English soccer team. In the show's pilot, "SportsCenter" announces that, as a coach, Lasso became beloved for doing a very particular victory dance, a maneuver that combined fist pumping with the running man. The dance was embarrassing and endearing at the same time.
The Ted Lasso dance, it turns out, is something that Sudeikis had been doing since he was a teenager in Kansas, which he and his fellow classmates did to elicit laughter. As he grew up, Sudeikis took his dance with him and performed it on stage and eventually on TV.
The dance
In a 2021 appearance on the video interview program "The Off Camera Show," the comedian said that what was to become the Ted Lasso dance was also one of the key elements that landed him his on-camera gig on "Saturday Night Live." It seems that the goofy in-jokes and weird habits you develop as a teen can indeed be lucrative in your future, and cracking them out in front of Tom Brady is a great way to get the attention of "SNL" producer Lorne Michaels.
Sudeikis recalls that it was his second year working as an "SNL" writer when football star Tom Brady was hosting. Sudeikis and two of the other writers cooked up a "Behind the Music" spoof all about the infamous "Super Bowl Shuffle," a horrendous novelty song from 1985 performed by the actual Chicago Bears (credited as The Chicago Bears Shufflin' Crew). In the sketch, it was posited — in "Behind the Music" fashion — that Bears quarterback Jim McMahon became embittered by the fame the song brought him and decided to become a solo recording artist. His only problem was he was only talented at performing with post-touchdown dancers.
When it came to performing dumb endzone dances, Sudeikis was prepped. He said:
"There's a sketch that I did when I was on the show called "What Up With That?" where I would do all like this hip-hop dancing from the nineties. I was the goofy white guy doing all these dances; same stuff that made people laugh as a teenager in AA basketball. Same thing that I did with "What Up With That?" that people have really enjoyed [was] the thing I did in that sketch; it's the exact same thing that did in ["Behind the Music"], behind [Brady]."
Behind the Music: The Super Bowl Shuffle
Sudeikis never really intended for the goofy dancing he did behind Brady to be an audition piece, but evidently, it elicited enough laughter that Lorne Michaels took notice. The dance was to be put in the sketch, and was originally intended for another cast member. Sudeikis said:
"So like thirty people were sitting here watching rehearsal and I started making this choice and cracking up. Lorne comes walking in ... sees what everyone is laughing at, and me doing this goofy dancing behind Tom Brady. That was a Friday night, then that night — that's what I've heard — they were like 'Well you can't have a writer playing that. We're gonna put it to a cast member.' And it's a valid point, you know?"
It wasn't until one of the show's bigger stars at the time suggested that it was Sudeikis' unique moves that elicited the intended laughs that the comedian was considered a performer. He continued his anecdote:
"The story goes that Tina [Fey] was like 'Well who in the cast can we put in that's gonna get that laugh?' And then it was ... the next night. It was Saturday. The 'Super Bowl Shuffle' thing came on, and I got my laughs as a nobody ... I'm in sunglasses and a hat. You can't tell it's me, even if you knew it was me. We had two weeks off. Cut to the last Friday of that two-week break, and Lorne calls me and says 'We wanna put you in the cast.'"
The rest is history. Sudeikis would appear in 174 episodes of SNL over the next eight years and is currently one of the bigger stars on TV. All it took was stupid dancing behind Tom Brady.