I don’t know how much crossover there is between Hallmark fans and Ted Lasso fans, but I know it exists, because I’m a fan of both. So when Lasso straightforwardly spoke about why he thinks Hallmark movies “suck, but they're great,” I knew exactly what he was talking about. And when Sarah Ramos’ Christmas in Notting Hill nodded back to the viral Apple TV+ moment, I was right there with the flick’s cheeky response, as well. So, what’s the deal with the callouts?
In Ted Lasso, the titular coach was explaining how the team was being as “unoffensive as a Hallmark movie,” a reference that AFC Richmond obviously did not understand. He went on in the episode to clarify he was a fan of the network’s Christmas movies, telling Roy Kent how “great” the movies are but also how “they’re good with the sound off.”
I liked Ted Lasso explaining what a Hallmark Christmas movie is. pic.twitter.com/K8rLZY9LmOMarch 22, 2023
While I’d argue some of these are among the best Christmas movies and not the suckiest, it’s a really funny aside about the formula of the holiday movies in what was mostly a far more serious conversation between Lasso and Kent. Meanwhile, the individuals who worked on Ramos’ 2023 Christmas movie obviously watched Ted Lasso because the flick itself nodded back at the viral moment.
In Christmas in Notting Hill, which aired on November 25th, a famous soccer player Graham (William Moseley) falls for a woman named Georgia (Sarah Ramos). At one point Georgia shared a speech that nodded back to the moment between Ted Lasso and Roy Kent, quipping:
Your coach is an American football coach turned soccer coach? With no prior experience? Who bakes biscuits and makes motivational signs? Is heavy on the folksy charm and still doesn't know what offsides is?
As it turns out, the Ted Lasso moment had actually been going viral thanks to its Apple TV+ release right around the time that Christmas in Notting Hill was filming this past year. (Hallmark movies often film in advance, so this checks out.) An SVP of programming at Hallmark, Samantha DiPippo told People that when the team saw the reference on TV, given their movie also had a football-oriented plot, they just thought it would be perfect to pepper in a callback of their own.
When we saw Ted Lasso’s Hallmark Christmas movies reference, we just happened to be filming in London on a movie where our male lead was a professional football player. We thought it would be fun to add in a few cheeky lines about Ted Lasso — all in good fun!
While this is perhaps a less straightforward reference than Lacey Chabert’s A Christmas Waltz co-star popping up in A Merry Scottish Christmas, now that I’ve stacked both moments up next to one another, it’s easy to see how they nod at one another. For example, both comments capture well-known feelings surrounding both the Hallmark and Apple TV+ series, and are fun insider takes on both shows.
So I guess the only final comment I have is now that the streaming series has probably ended (though there are ways Ted Lasso could return), if only we could get Brett Goldstein or Hannah Waddingham to commit to their own holiday movie, fans would really be getting the crossover they deserve. Frankly, I've seen stranger fandom crossover at Hallmark.
