How a photo of Coach Valvano made it into ‘Ted Lasso,’ thanks to this NC State grad
Here’s the story of how a little bit of Raleigh history made it into the hit Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso,” thanks to an N.C. State University alum from Kinston who works on the show.
If you blink in the middle of the pilot episode, you might miss it. But careful viewers will catch a glimpse of storied N.C. State basketball coach Jim Valvano sprinkled among a montage of other iconic sports victories.
The moment is courtesy of Kip Kroeger, a 2004 alum of the university. He’s a supervising post-production producer on the show, and when there was a need for a poster of an underdog moment from the athletic world, he volunteered the Wolfpack’s 1983 national championship win.
“I went over and found a gray wall, and I actually put it up on the wall myself,” said Kroeger in an interview with The News & Observer. “So my hands were putting it up there to get ol’ Jimmy V in there. That was fun for me.”
Kroeger and the team behind “Ted Lasso” are having plenty of fun moments these days. As the feel-good series wraps up its second season Oct. 8, it’s both a critics’ favorite and beloved by TV fans. In its first season, the comedy-drama earned 20 nominations at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards — the most of any comedy — and took home seven awards in September, including Outstanding Comedy Series.
The show tells the story of an American college football coach, played by Jason Sudeikis, who is hired to coach an English soccer team without any experience. With his folksy charm and relentless optimism, he tries to win over the skeptical — and stereotypically cynical — British team, staff and its fans.
The show’s positivity resonated with viewers all over the world and provided them something to look forward to in a time when uncertainty reigned amid the coronavirus pandemic. The show has been renewed for a third season.
“It happened in like the craziest year of all,” said Kroeger, about the coronavirus pandemic. “The awards are amazing and the recognition the show has gotten is mind-boggling in so many ways.”
Kroeger, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children, has worked on several TV series, including “Scrubs” and the Roseanne spin-off “The Conners.” On “Ted Lasso,” he leads the post-production team to make each episode come together. His role allowed him to travel to the United Kingdom during filming to help guide the editing process.
He spoke with The News & Observer this week about about working on a hit TV series in the middle of a global pandemic, his favorite spots in Raleigh as an undergraduate at NC State, and his memories growing up in Kinston. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Q: What does it feel like being able to represent your hometown on such a large scale?
Kroeger: Kinston was a great place to grow up. I still remember playing baseball with all my buddies. And, you know, those were some of the best times that I can remember. It’s funny, because Kinston was always a basketball town. There’s not a lot that’s come out of Kinston, but amazing basketball players do seem to come out of there. I remember being a kid and going and watching (former UNC basketball player) Jerry Stackhouse play high school basketball.
The other person that’s actually out here (in L.A.), in a funny coincidence, is Jaime Pressly, who was on “Mom” (CBS). Her mother taught my younger sister dance classes for years. In a funny twist, I actually just produced a show that we shot on the same stage that “Mom” was on for eight years. So, it’s all connected.
Q: Tell us about the Jim Valvano poster cameo in the pilot episode. Did you have something to do with that?
Kroeger: That was funny. It was our pilot episode. We were in editing and they cut it together. And they’re like, “I think we need another poster for the rhythm of this montage. We should get someone to put another poster in there.” And I was like, “Do you have something in mind?” And they’re like, “No, just something iconic.” I was like, “What about Jimmy V?” I got a, “Perfect. Find this iconic moment from the championship.”
So we found a poster. I showed it to Jason (Sudeikis) and (executive producer) Bill (Lawrence) and they were like, “Oh! That’s great! Let’s go with it!” Because we had wrapped production — we were done shooting for the season — I called up one of our post houses and they actually filmed it for me.
Q: What has it been like, during a pandemic, being able to produce something so impactful?
Kroeger: I mean, everybody knows what it’s like working in a pandemic. It’s not a lot of fun. It’s not our natural rhythm, and it’s not our natural brand of interaction. It’s a strain. I remember we were in the middle of post-production. We were just starting to finish our episodes when everything had to lock down.
Since then, we do remote mixes, remote color correction, the effects reviews. Our whole team got very proficient on Zoom, as did everyone else in the world for the last year. But it was hard. I mean, you know, so much of the editing process, especially working with with Bill and Jason, is exploratory, you know?
It’s taking the time to go through all the nooks and crannies and look for just the right reaction, you know, to somebody’s line or somebody’s joke.
We sent this thing (the show) out in the world, and we had lived with it for so long, you don’t know how it’s gonna be received. I mean, you never really know. But this one especially, it had been such a strange year in so many different ways and we were hopeful that this sort of feel-good nature of it, you know, would resonate with people.
Q: What was it like being at the Emmys and winning an award?
Kroeger: It’s validating in a lot of ways, but it’s also so confusing just as a human because you don’t want to put all your mental stuff in that kind of thing... Unless you get them. Then you can count them as something.
Bill’s favorite joke goes, “Look, congrats on all the award nomination stuff. Awards don’t matter for anything unless you win — and then they matter for everything.”
We had a decent-sized group because of all the nominations this year. Because of COVID, it was nominees-only. And then the nominees got to bring a plus-one.
So for our show, pretty much everybody pulled all the plus-ones. So directors, producers, writers, everybody kind of pulled the plus-ones and got in more of our writers and producers and cast and stuff like that. And it was really cool. Because, as you saw, when everybody got up on stage, we had a pretty sizable group there. And it was neat. It was really cool to have sort of a large group of everybody there, even despite the circumstances and everything.
Q: What are some of the places in Kinston you most remember from your childhood?
Kroeger: The most special places, you know, were Fairfield Recreation Center. That was where we played all the baseball games
And then I remember it was always a treat to get to go to like Pizza Inn or Pizza Villa. The House of Wang was another place; it was a Chinese restaurant in town. I think those were pretty much the highlights. That and Bojangles, which we just don’t get out here and I really miss.
Q: What were some of your favorite places in Raleigh that were a big part of your experience at NC State?
Kroeger: When I was there, I was in SigEp, which is one of the fraternities down on Fraternity Court. We lived in that house that was right at the end right of the drive. And it was really cool, because you always kind of were the Welcome Wagon for the entire court. So we would always get to see everybody passing by and had a big old bench up front that we spent a lot of time on, you know, in the spring, in the fall and all that.
I remember we would go to Capparell’s. It was the bar directly across from (University Towers) pretty much on Hillsborough Street. It was a little hole in the wall. I spent a lot of time there.
And then it was always you know Carter-Finley (Stadium) and the PNC, just going to games. I mean, I was there when (Phillip) Rivers was the quarterback. So he was in the same class I was in. He started every game while I was there. And going to those games and tailgating and stuff are just fond memories that, you know, even when I watch the games from out here you can almost remember being back there again.
This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 4:33 PM.
