Ted Lasso’s Aisling Sharkey & Rex Hayes’ Onscreen Rivalry Comes Naturally

The first time you see Aisling Sharkey and Rex Hayes on Ted Lasso, their characters, AFC Richmond players and twins Niamh and Siobhan, are having a full-on fight on the football (aka soccer) field. That happened to be their first day on set, and let’s just say they fully committed to the sibling rivalry.

“I got a stud to my thigh from this lovely person over here,” Hayes tells Bustle, pointing to Sharkey beside them. They’re both Zooming in from a New York City hotel room the morning after the Ted Lasso Season 4 red-carpet premiere in early August. “Now I’ve got a tiny little sliver of a scar from where the stud was in my thigh. Neither of us shy away from that kind of stuff … We are both like, ‘Let’s have at it.’”

Sharkey adds, “Yeah, people thought it was funny.”

“Seven takes later, we were still going at it,” Hayes says. “We have a lot to unpack here.”

There is, indeed, much to unpack in the new season of Ted Lasso (which started dropping new episodes weekly on Apple TV on Aug. 5). The comedy returns after a three-year hiatus with Ted (Jason Sudeikis) returning to England to coach AFC Richmond’s new women’s football team. Recapturing the magic of its early days, the show introduces viewers to a whole new roster of endearing and feisty athletes who are more than ready to prove themselves on the pitch but struggle to work together as a team.

In real life, that wasn’t a problem for the cast. During their audition, Hayes and Sharkey had an undeniable sibling chemistry. “We did, like, two reads of the scene, and [Sharkey] started really coming at me, and I wasn’t sure whether she was coming at me for a choice that I’d made in the scene as an actor,” Hayes says, turning to their costar. “You did some clapping or something at something I said, and I’m like, Absolutely not. So I gave it back.”

For Sharkey, who had just graduated from drama school, Ted Lasso was exciting new territory. The Irish actor had appeared in 2022’s Jurassic Park: Dominion and had done a variety of theater work, from Gypsy to Little Women. “We were living in the moment, and we could only do that because we knew each other so well,” she says, referring to how much the cast was encouraged to improvise their lines. “Every day was a different battlefield, which sometimes, if you’re not in the mood, was hard. But it was the most fun I’ve had on set because I just felt so free.”

Hayes, a Welsh actor with credits in BBC shows BANG and The Pact, couldn’t agree more and takes pride in how “established” their sibling relationship feels. “I feel really proud of the work that we did off screen, as well as on screen, to really feel like these characters are real people, and I truly believe that Niamh and Siobhan live or exist in a world that feels like people can relate to, or fall in love with, or feel annoyed by.”

Below, the actors open up about the audition process, soccer training, and their future on Ted Lasso.

How are you feeling now that the show is out? What did the anticipation feel like?

Hayes: It’s been building for a long time now, so it’s really nice that we’re finally here and people are meeting the characters.

Sharkey: I can’t fathom it just yet because we filmed for so long. We filmed for seven months, and we’re on a pitch playing football every day. I forgot that we are being filmed by those cameras, and it’ll all be edited together, and people are going to see what we did.

Hayes: We’re running around kicking a ball, and then now it’s Ted Lasso.

Take me back to the beginning for both of you. What was the audition process like? What was it like getting cast?

Hayes: The audition process was very simple. I did two auditions in total. The first one on my own, and that was just with the casting director going on tape, and then I did Zoom readings.

Sharkey: Rex did Zoom chemistry calls with more people than me. I can’t believe Rex read with other twins. But yeah, I booked to do Mamma Mia! on tour as second-cover Sophie. And then Theo Park, [Ted Lasso’s] casting director, called, and I did one in-person audition. I did one Zoom audition. I had never done a Zoom chemistry call, so I kept looking at a point in the wall. And then Theo Park was like, “You’re doing it wrong,” and it was just this whole thing. And I was like, “I f*cked it.”

Hayes: I remember that. Yeah, you were acting out here, like “Hey!”

Sharkey: I was using your voice, picking a point on the wall, and being like, “I’m gonna act with that.” And then Theo Park was like, “Act with your iPad.”

Hayes: Hey, it worked. We did it, baby.

Sharkey: But then I didn’t hear back for like a month and a half, and I was like, “That’s me done. I f*cked it. No bother. I have this other job.” And then I got a call, like, a couple of weeks later.

Hayes: Yeah, it was crazy. It was like we did that audition, and then six weeks —

Sharkey: Six weeks of nothing went by.

Hayes: Then all of a sudden, we’re in Ted Lasso. It was absolutely bizarre.

Did you all have to do football training?

Sharkey: We did three weeks of boot camp. When we started, we all met up with the actors, the eight of us, and we had like a week of football camp where we had our trainers just doing drills with us, teaching us how to kick and pass, and then teaching us little bits of choreo that we’d be doing in the show. Because at the end of the day, we’re doing choreography, and it’s all laid out. I had never played football. I’m a dancer, so then I could learn the choreography, with an extra appendage that is the football.

Hayes: I’ve played football all of my life, at school on the yard, and then in various summer camps. I stopped playing when I was 12 because I wasn’t allowed to play with boys anymore, and then left it until I picked it back up when I moved to London, joined a grassroots football team, made some amazing friends, and it came back into my life in a really big way. If I was going to get any job, this is the job that I was going to get. It feels very destined in the universe, written in the stars. But we had three weeks of falling in love with each other playing football, and there’s no better way, in my opinion, to get to know people than by kicking a ball back and forth.

Sharkey: As actors, a lot of the time our job is to just show up on set and be like, “And here’s your twin that you have all this history with. Go!” It’s a rare privilege to have that time to bond. That’s where we found our magic and our flow.

Hayes: Our flow, yeah, and our mutual love and mutual hatred.

Sharkey: And codependency.

Hayes: Big time. We are now one and the same.

I love that. Did you both sit down and be like, “Let’s come up with some fun backstories about our twin lives”?

Hayes: We did a lot of like, I wonder if we did this?

Sharkey: It was our first day on set, and I was like, “Dad’s outside to pick us up. We gotta go.” Not even on camera.

Hayes: We’re not in the scene, babe. But hey, it meant that we had a laugh. A takeaway from this whole experience is that we — as a pair, but specifically because she never leaves me alone — have had the best time. We’re always cracking up, even if we’re not on camera. We’re doing bits in the background, and I think you can see that in the wide shots.

Sharkey: I’m watching the episodes when they’re sending them out, and I’m like, half of this wasn’t in the scripts. The fun bits that make it in are things we come up with because we had been on set for 14 hours. We know our characters, we know our scenes, we know what they’re thinking.

Just in the first four episodes, you immediately fall in love with all the new characters. Do you think there’s room to tell more of your characters’ stories in a Season 5?

Hayes: I would love that. We don’t know anything about that right now, and this season is what we’re focusing on particularly. It’s really important to establish the team first, and this season does that really well.

Sharkey: Yeah, it’s not ready to end. As in, I’m not ready for us not to be in this world. There’s so much more to be said.

What’s next for you both?

Hayes: I’m so looking forward to having a rest. I’m going to a cabin in West Wales this weekend, and I’m very excited to turn off for a few weeks and reflect on the last couple of weeks.

Sharkey: I just did a really fun film in Belfast, and I’ve never worked on an Irish set. I’m doing a lot of festivals. My partner’s a musician, so I’m just going and dancing in fields because that’s honestly where I come back to myself. Also, Irish festivals are very different to English festivals. It’s a whole community and a culture in Ireland. So I’m gonna have fun, dance, and let the last year out. I cannot believe the 180 my life has done in the last year. It looks completely different, in a really overwhelming way. So I’m just gonna take the summer to dance in fields with my mates and come back to —

Hayes: [Sings “Dancing Queen”] Yeah, you could be doing that right now.

Sharkey: Yeah, I could. There’s a world where I’m in Birmingham right now singing “The Name of the Game.”

Hayes: I’m so glad that you’re here.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.