Brett Goldstein
Brett Goldstein is an actor, born 1980.
Before Roy Kent there was a decade of British films almost nobody saw. Brett Goldstein, born in Sutton, London in 1980, worked as a comedian and writer and turned up in modest independent comedies: Mr Burrows in The Hooligan Factory, Albert in The Knot, David in Howl, and the title role in SuperBob, a low-budget picture about a postman with powers who is too English to enjoy them.
Ted Lasso changed the scale. Roy Kent is written as a monosyllabic and furious retired footballer, which is a straightforward joke, and Goldstein makes it something else by playing the volume as a defence rather than a personality. The growl is deployed against sentiment, and it fails, repeatedly and visibly, which is where the character's whole comedy and most of its feeling comes from. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for each of the show's first two seasons.
He has since spent his capital on writing as much as acting. Goldstein is a co-creator of Shrinking, in which he also appears as Louis, and has taken the sort of studio jobs that follow an Emmy: Hercules in Thor: Love and Thunder, the voice of Roland in The Garfield Movie, Simon in All of You. Office Romance and the animated Sheep Detectives are among the credits ahead of him. The through line is that he is funnier when the material lets him be quiet.
Movies (12)
TV (7)
Where to start with Brett Goldstein
There is no clever alternative worth pretending about here: go to Ted Lasso, and watch the first two seasons for the Roy Kent performance specifically. The joke is established in about ten seconds and then patiently dismantled over twenty hours.
Shrinking is the follow-up that shows the writer as much as the actor, and his own role in it is small and well judged. If you want the pre-fame material, SuperBob is the best of it, a genuinely likeable micro-budget comedy where he carries the whole thing, and Derek is a useful reminder of the British comedy ecosystem he came out of. All of You is the closest thing here to a straight romantic lead. Thor: Love and Thunder and The Garfield Movie are paycheque appearances, enjoyable and entirely disposable.
Brett Goldstein on CrossBinge
- Cover Story: Can Ted Lasso Do It Twice?