Rick Astley Talks ‘Ted Lasso’ Rick-Roll Moment Ahead of Jason Sudeikis’ Super Bowl Ad (Exclusive)

Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis is starring in a new Super Bowl Ad for TurboTax, which fans are sure to enjoy. Ahead of the big commercial, PopCulture.com had the chance to talk with pop icon Rick Astley about the use of his hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up” in the most recent season of Ted Lasso. “Well, I loved the show anyway,” Astley shared with PopCulture exclusively. 

“A friend of mine got me into watching it at first because I wasn’t aware of it right on the off kind of thing,” he explained. “I missed a few episodes when it very first started and then caught up. So I was really excited for the second series anyway. And then my wife manages me, and she said, ‘You’re never going to believe this, but I’ve had the call about them using “Never Gonna Give You Up” in an episode.’ And I’m like, ‘Great,” because I’m thinking it’s going to be on the radio while they’re getting ready for the next game, the next match whatever. And she said, ‘No, no, no, no, no. They’re going to use it in the episode.’ So she got to see all the clips and everything, but…didn’t let me see it.”

Eventually, Astley says he got to watch the episode despite “having no clue how they’d used it.” He added the moment “brought a tear” to his eye. “I thought it was absolutely incredible. It was amazing. Because that song obviously has been used in so many different ways, which is great and I am not complaining in any way, shape or form. But when somebody does something the way they did it, and I don’t want to give a spoiler alert for somebody who likes that show and hasn’t caught up yet, but they literally turned it upside down.”

He continued: “They did it in a way that I don’t think I’ve seen anybody really do it in that way, to actually incorporate it within the story as well as actually changing the song completely and everything. It was pretty amazing, I think. And it kind of made me think about the words differently, if I’m honest, as well. And I’ve sung those words to many different audiences all over the world and kind of just forgot, really, just got lost in the moment of singing an old song, you know what I mean, an old favorite of mine, whatever. But I think when you hear it done in a different way and somebody does something pretty beautiful with it like that, it’s pretty amazing to be honest. It’s quite emotional.”