Brendan Hunt tells Seth Meyers that soccer stardom comes with more falcon poop than he'd imagined

Seth Meyers and Brendan Hunt have come a long way, both figuratively and literally, since their time in Amsterdam. It’s in that European bastion of Second City-style improv called Boom Chicago that the Late Night host and the Ted Lasso breakout scene-stealer cut their teeth before heading out into the larger, more scripted entertainment world—and whose late-90s environs Hunt remains grateful were largely cellphone-free. It is Amsterdam after all, and when your circle of friends includes someone named “Australian Dave” with a penchant for substance-fueled fancy dress parties, there’s going to be some memorable stuff you’re glad nobody has the camera roll to document.

Hunt, currently deadpanning his way to long-deserved stardom as Coach Ted Lasso’s trusty life partner Coach Beard, told Meyers that his generation of young improv comics (who included the likes of Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, and Hunt’s Ted Lasso co-creators Joe Kelly and Jason Sudeikis) were the last of a breed. That breed being young American improv actors able to cut loose in Amsterdam without ubiquitous handheld documentation of possible future, career-threatening blackmail material. “We’ve lost something there,” Hunt nodded sadly while secretly chuckling about everything he and Meyers got away with.

The spotlight’s finally found Hunt, however, as Ted Lasso is riding an astonishing 20 nominations (including four for actor-writer-creator Hunt) into this year’s Emmy Awards. (“Yeah, it was an all right little morning,” Hunt said of the early, baby-changing day his and Ted Lasso’s fortunes changed forever.) With all that adulation comes some unique opportunities, as Hunt (whom Community aficionados will remember as the guitar strumming hitchhiker who musically assured Shirley and Britta that Jesus loves marijuana—and human blood) told Meyers about the honor of being chosen to release the birds of prey at a Los Angeles professional soccer game.

With a glorious still photo of himself holding aloft the falcon mascot of MLS’ Los Angeles Football Club being shown off by Meyers, Hunt resignedly confessed that all this football-adjacent fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Fans of Ted Lasso’s AFC Richmond are painfully aware that mixing real animal mascots with unpredictable live sporting events is a recipe for disaster (RIP Earl—you were a very good boy), an inescapable fact Hunt affirmed by assuring Meyers that, yep, that majestic falcon is, indeed, pooping right on Hunt during their big, game-opening moment. Hunt could only thank the “J.J. Abrams flare coming out of the falcon’s butthole” during the unfortunate, caught-on-camera event for making it seem like his real-life football fame is slightly less festooned with animal waste than it’s turned out to be.