Turns out Brett Goldstein was depressed before Ted Lasso — and he’s talking about it
Before Ted Lasso, Brett Goldstein says he was depressed — and a therapist’s simple tip helped shift his outlook.
Here's a bit of surprising honesty from Brett Goldstein you don't often hear in the starry world of comedy TV: just before Ted Lasso came along and made him a bit of a household name, he was convinced he'd missed his "big break" entirely—and was pretty bloody miserable about it, too.
If you assumed he sailed into Ted Lasso on a tide of golden opportunities, not quite. The reality is, he had a run of near-misses in the US, with two promising shows that were meant to be his way in both collapsing in quick succession. Not exactly encouraging stuff when you're flying solo in Los Angeles, trying to land that elusive hit.
The Breaking Point
By the time he hit his third pilot season Stateside, Goldstein said the hope had more or less evaporated. He told Men's Health he was barely even reading for projects that interested him at that point. The offers were uninspiring, and the isolation of LA wasn't helping much either.
Here's how Goldstein put it himself in that Men's Health chat, summing up those low days:
He was staying alone in LA, feeling increasingly down. ‘It was all a bit grim.’ Also, I was getting older and I had this moment of genuine… I don’t know, epiphany, or something, where I was like, Maybe I’ve missed my window. Maybe the window for me having any sort of big success has gone,
He knew he was depressed but it took a trip to his therapist to see just how stuck he'd gotten. Nearly everything he tried—he says—felt a bit pointless. The shift actually came via a genuinely old-school suggestion: start a gratitude journal.
The Unlikely Fix
The therapist set Goldstein the task of listing 10 things a day to be grateful for—which, as he admits, feels almost ridiculous if you're at a low ebb. In his words, it forced him to start with basics as small as "the sun was up", but by day 30, he was seeing the world differently.
Goldstein explained the shift like this:
This didn’t come naturally. ‘In the beginning, when you’re so, so depressed, it’s like, 'Nothing.' But you have to put 10 in. 'The sun was up.' That’s one. You start so small. But by day 30 of doing that, you’ve started training your brain to look for the positive, and I could write a list of 100 things. I’m the luckiest guy in the world! Everything’s fucking amazing!
What's worth noting here is that the breakthrough wasn't some sudden fame or bonanza offer. He admits he was "creating stuff" for its own sake, just at a low-key level, and the mindset switch was about appreciating what he already had, not obsessing about shows or stardom.
And then, more or less exactly two weeks after he finally started feeling like 'the luckiest guy in the world', the phone rang, and Ted Lasso landed in his lap. Talk about timing.