SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about Episodes 408 and 409 of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso.

A very emotional Ted Lasso episode that included the death of a beloved original character, The Crown & Anchor pub owner Mae Green, played by Annette Badland, also acknowledged the death of the series’ popular recurring cast member Anthony Head, who played the villainous Rupert Mannion in the first three seasons.

A card, In Memory of Anthony Head, ran at the end of Season 4’s penultimate episode, “Mae Rides the Bus.” (You can see it below.)

“He was a beautiful man, and he will be much missed,” Badland told Deadline during an interview about Mae’s shocking death, reminiscing about famous Season 1 darts scene between Rupert and Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso at the pub. “He was charming and funny and generous, and we’d have naughty little sort of asides.

Ted Lasso was always expected to pay tribute to the veteran British actor who died on June 1 at the age of 72. When that was not done in the Season 4 premiere, many thought that Head would be honored in an episode he appears in as the season had wrapped production in January, months before his passing.

“I assumed he would be in this last [season], and didn’t know, as I think very few people knew, he was ill and just couldn’t do it,” Badland said.

Barely referenced in the first seven episodes, Head’s Rupert, ex-owner of AFC Richmond and ex-husband of the club’s current owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), came back into the forefront in Episode 8, when Higgins (Jeremy Swift), with the help of Mae and her “Follow the anger” advice, deducted that Rupert had been secretly buying shares to regain control of Richmond.

That remained a story thread in Episode 9 until the surprise twist at the end that revealed it was not Rupert but Tracey Ullman’s Zelda Southport who was behind the shady operation and on the verge of becoming a majority owner of the club.

The move raised questions whether Ted Lasso had pivoted from Rupert to Zelda as the culprit — and away from a potential Rebecca vs. Rupert battle for control of Richmond — in light of Head’s death (or leading into it). According to sources, no Season 4 storylines were changed following Head’s passing, there had been no formal plans for Head to be in Season 4 and no official approach to him about appearing.

It is unclear whether that was related to Head’s health issues which had been kept private. (His cause of death was listed by his daughters as complications due to pneumonia.) Head’s last acting credits were Season 3 of Ted Lasso, which came out in 2023, and the 2024 Prime Video movie Upgraded.

It is a longstanding TV tradition for characters to mirror the death of the actors who played them by passing away in the show. Because of the timing of Head’s passing after Season 4 had been completed, that will likely happen in Season 5.

The eccentric ultra-wealthy entrepreneur and sports investor Zelda — a polarizing and largely disliked new character introduced in Season 4 — had long been suspected by fans to be the season’s secret villain.

Zelda, who had become involved in Richmond’s women’s team with Keeley’s (Juno Temple) enthusiastic support over Rebecca’s serious reservations, was present when Higgins told Rebecca in Season 8 that Rupert was behind the buyouts. In fact, Zelda looked rather nervous for a moment when Higgins announced that he had solved the mystery before he dropped Rupert’s name and she chimed in with “Never underestimate the power of anger as fuel.” (We will likely find out more about her motives in the Season 4 finale.)

In Episode 9, Zelda also happened to be there any time Higgins and Rebecca discussed the matter. That included him telling his boss in the office that Rupert’s lawyers were “denying knowing anything about people selling shares but since there has been a pause in buying” and that Rebecca won’t lose control of the club regardless, as long as the Milk sisters, who no one had been able to get ahold of, don’t sell their shares. The three also were together on board the Richmond private jet when Higgins told Rebecca that even without the Milk sisters, the mystery buyer they believed to be Rupert can get 49% of the shares.

That may prove a moot point as Zelda was later seen giving her henchman, who had located the sisters, instructions to go as high as needed to secure their shares.

With the mystery solved, the producers felt it made sense to run an end card honoring Head in Season 9. Rupert had his Season 4 moment in 408 and 409, so paying tribute to Head following the close of his character’s two-episode arc felt most appropriate. (Running the card at the end of Episode 8 likely also would’ve spoiled the surprise that it wasn’t Rupert who was buying the shares.)

Head recurred on the first two seasons of Ted Lasso, becoming a series regular in Season 3. His character Rupert, Rebecca’s vindictive and philandering former husband who lost Richmond to her in the divorce, was the original three-season installment’s main antagonist. He subsequently bought another Premiere League team — West Ham United — and recruited Ted’s kitman turned assistant coach Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed) to work with him, before losing it in the Season 3 finale.

“We will miss him, I respect him, and it’s a great honor to be in the episode that is dedicated to him,” Badland said. Here is a video of her comments.

“I was very successful since I was a kid,” Tom Cruise told a full house at the Academy Museum’s 945-seat David Geffen Theater following a screening of Digger. That stardom has led him in search of ever bigger challenges, learning new skills and finding opportunities to apply them.

As he put it: “OK, the door’s open. Now I want to push it again.”

He has certainly done that with Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s wildly ambitious, deeply weird and extravagantly mounted comedy, in which Cruise plays a Texas oil tycoon forced to face the music after an environmental disaster puts the world at risk.

The Warner Bros. release, arriving just as Paramount nears its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, carries a reported $125 million production budget.

At 64 and 63, respectively, Cruise and Iñárritu are near-exact contemporaries taking this leap together. Cruise has ventured into similarly offbeat territory before, memorably in an Oscar-nominated turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and beneath the prosthetics of Ben Stiller’s comedy Tropic Thunder.

But he has spent much of his recent career delivering increasingly elaborate Mission: Impossible spectacles, taking extraordinary physical risks within a franchise whose appeal he understands intimately. Digger requires a different leap of faith, both from Cruise and from the audience he hopes will follow him.

Among critics, the film has proved wildly divisive, with some reviews positively savage, The Hollywood Reporter’s among them. I understand the objections to Digger; I was also quite happy to have seen it. There is something invigorating about watching this much talent and money committed to a movie this peculiar, even when its considerable parts refuse to cooperate.

Iñárritu offered a remarkably candid account of the challenges during the discussion. Making this trompe-l’œil of a film required a constant negotiation between theatricality and the camera. What felt inspired on set could look very different the following morning.

“We were laughing all day,” the four-time Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker said. Then he would watch the dailies: “Oh my God,” he recalled thinking. “This is not working. This is shit.” Adjusting the performance could send it too far in the other direction: “It’s too naturalistic. It’s not so funny.”

In sharing that, Iñárritu was describing the search for the film’s highly unusual tone, not conceding that the finished movie had failed. But the anecdote gets at the precariousness of the enterprise. The actors had to find that tone in their bodies and voices, he explained. “Nothing can be written in tone. It doesn’t exist,” he said.

Iñárritu compared the precision of Cruise’s acting to the “micro decisions” he makes during a dangerous stunt, when “one second is the difference between life and death.” On set, the director watched that attention extend to where Cruise placed his hands, when he winked and when he stayed silent. “Every take he’s just present and observing naturally,” he said.

Cruise, meanwhile, seemed delighted by the company he was keeping. He repeatedly jumped in to praise his fellow actors, recalling how difficult it was to stop laughing around John Goodman. Of Sandra Hüller, he said, “What an extraordinary actress,” before settling on a succession of wows.

His enthusiasm was considerably easier to pin down than his acting techniques. After Cruise gave a drawn-out answer about a life spent observing humanity to explain his character work, Iñárritu teased him: “He keeps the secret. He don’t answer.”

By the end of the conversation, Cruise was making a broader argument about what audiences want, and what filmmakers should give them. “This film is handmade,” he said. He described stopping on set with his colleagues to look around and appreciate the skill that had gone into the physical world surrounding them. “People want to see real things,” he said. Then, a little later: “People want real things and they want real experiences.”

Cruise never mentioned artificial intelligence, but the repeated emphasis on “real things” and “handmade” filmmaking could readily be heard as an implicit rejoinder to it. His remarks placed the value in the people doing the work, the skills they had acquired and the pleasure of being together to make something. “It was never handed to any of us,” he said.

For all his confidence, there was also an acknowledgment that the opportunity to keep doing this depends on people buying tickets. “My hope is always that the films would do enough that I’d have that opportunity to do it again,” Cruise said.

Whether audiences follow him into Digger remains to be seen. For now, he seemed grateful to have made the leap. “It’s not like I don’t have challenges, we don’t have challenges,” he said. “But I really choose to be joyful about creating.”

After posing for a cast and crew photo, Cruise, ever the audience pleaser, spent 15 minutes mingling with fans who rushed the stage for selfies and a few words with a movie legend. Four decades into his career, he’s still finding new ways to make it in this risky business.

He clearly loves the job.

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