Jason Sudeikis Goes One-on-One With WNBA Great Breanna Stewart

“Stewie!” When the New York Liberty’s star forward Breanna Stewart shows up on the THR set, all 6-feet-4 of her, Jason Sudeikis reaches up to embrace her. It’s the kind of hug he’s given her courtside after the team’s major victories, including during their run to the 2024 WNBA championship. The four-time Emmy winner, who played college basketball in his native Kansas before going into comedy and becoming Saturday Night Live’s resident jock, doesn’t do fandom halfway. It’s why, today, he refuses to remove his Arsenal hat; he became a hard-core supporter of the Premier League team while in London shooting Ted Lasso, which in its fourth season sees the irrepressibly upbeat coach leading a women’s soccer team. It’s why he’s wearing Nikes in UConn colorways to honor Stewart’s alma mater. And it’s why he’s become a fixture of CeLIBrity row, the group of Liberty superfans that includes Spike Lee, Alicia Keys and the cast of Severance.

There are few accomplishments in basketball that Stewart has not achieved. She has four NCAA titles, one WNBA title, four World Cup championships and three Olympic gold medals. The 32-year-old is far from done. “I want to beat all the records,” she tells Sudeikis. Who are we to doubt her? A week after her sit-down with Sudeikis, the eight-seed Liberty will sweep top-seed Minnesota Lynx in the playoffs, toppling the team led by Stewart’s friend and former UConn teammate Napheesa Collier, with whom she co-founded the successful 3-on-3 offseason league Unrivaled in 2023.

In this third edition of THR‘s Game Recognize Game series, Stewart and Sudeikis discuss the surprising parallels in their career paths, the ways in which the WNBA is handling the scrutiny since superstar Caitlin Clark’s arrival ushered in millions of new fans but also culture-war insanity in a league that’s long been a haven of inclusivity, and how she would realistically handle having Ted Lasso as a coach.

JASON SUDEIKIS Nice to see you in street clothes.

BREANNA STEWART I know, right? We never do this.

SUDEIKIS And you never see me out of Liberty gear. We’re doing THR‘s Game Recognize Game. Athlete, artist, artistic athlete, athletic artist, I’d like to think. … How are the gigs similar? I have my theories, but I’m more interested in what you think.

STEWART Well, people ask me why I want to continue to be great, or how I keep winning. There’s this obsessiveness of continuing to go and try to be better. Like, almost an insane confidence.

SUDEIKIS Yeah. It doesn’t feel like ambition from the inside. It just feels like, if I have the opportunity to get to continue to do this, why not do it as best as I can, until I can no longer do it? With athletics, though, it seems like, oh, eventually someone younger comes in, with better knees, more athletic, whatever. Rarely is it that they’re hungrier. I don’t know of anybody that’s been in your position that’s just like, “Oh, fuck it, I give up. Let them have it.” That doesn’t happen.

STEWART No. Especially when a new person comes in, you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to sauce them.” Like, “Oh, they’re in for a long night.”

SUDEIKIS How has the college system changed? It feels like, even from my small understanding, [UConn coach Geno] Auriemma softened in his relationship to the players — we all saw Paige [Bueckers], you know, smack him on the butt.

STEWART He’s so, so soft. Coach Auriemma is so soft.

SUDEIKIS Lorne, Lorne Michaels at SNL, I feel like has softened up, too.

STEWART When I went to college­ — when I went to UConn, Coach Auriemma was tough. He was an ass. He was really an ass. I was a 17-, 18-year-old that thought I was working hard — and then he just kind of chopped me down.

SUDEIKIS Did it help when you look back on it now? Do you go, “Oh, it was worth it”?

STEWART It helped. I wouldn’t be where I am without Coach Auriemma. Of course. Did it always need to be like that? Mm, no.

SUDEIKIS Same with Lorne, yeah. Has that changed?

STEWART Yes. I think the NIL [name-image-likeness] landscape makes it different. He had to soften to keep people around. You could just transfer and not have to sit out. You get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars — millions — to be places. So [as a coach], you’ve got to be nice.

SUDEIKIS Exactly! Any idea how that’s going to affect those same 17-, 18-year-olds that you were? Beyond the winning, you get to feel like hot shit. You can go, “Look, Coach, you have to listen to me ’cause I have 250,000 followers. These are my apostles. I am God. They will come after you. They will dox you.”

STEWART I think what’s happening with the generation going to college now, their why is not the same. Because my why was, well, I want to be the best player that ever leaves UConn, and I’m going to win four national championships …

SUDEIKIS Which you did. No big deal.

STEWART … and I want to be great. But, like, their why now is, “Well, I want to get deals. I want to get this money.” That’s my assumption. But when you have the money just being flaunted in front of your face, you’re thinking about it.

SUDEIKIS We both come from what are, from the outside view, these cults: SNL and UConn. It teaches you to work hard, probably harder than you thought you needed to. It is the hardest job I ever had. I was there 10 years. I would not be where I am without it.

STEWART SNL is incredible. How did that start?

SUDEIKIS I mean, it’s not too dissimilar from the journey of a blue-chip athlete on the way in. There are different places that they come and scout. There’s The Groundlings in Los Angeles, that’s where Will Ferrell started or Kristen Wiig. UCB here in New York, where Amy Poehler came from, and a bunch of people behind the scenes. I did a thing called Second City in Chicago. Tina Fey did that. Chris Farley, John Belushi, Gilda Radner back in the day. I was on, like, their JV team, the touring company. A fella named Jeff Richmond, who is Tina Fey’s husband, came out to see our show in Las Vegas. And he was like, “Hey, you ever thought about auditioning for SNL?” And, at that point, I was like, “No way, Jose. I don’t like that show. I ain’t that.” It was mostly me being a 22-year-old dickhead that was like, “I don’t want something that would never want me.” But I auditioned for it in, like, 2003, and got hired as a writer. Later I had a meeting with Lorne my second year — my sophomore year. I mentioned to him, like, “Hey, you know, to do this, I gave up performing. I’d still really like to do that.”

STEWART Yeah. Put me in the game.

SUDEIKIS The next show, Tom Brady hosted, and I got to do a bit in one of the scenes that I wrote where I did like the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit and all those silly dances that I still do — that I’ve done on Ted Lasso, that I used to do to make kids on my basketball team laugh. And he put me in the cast, like, two weeks after that. What is it like when Coach says, “Hey, come play for us”?

STEWART It’s not like he’s offering formally. He’s like, “I think you should be here. This place is going to be what makes you better.” And then he’s like, “Well, are you going to come?”

SUDEIKIS Did any other place have a shot at you?

STEWART Like, for real? I looked at Duke. Beautiful campus. I looked at Maryland, I looked at Penn State. Those were my tops. But no, I wanted to be great. I looked at all the players that came before me and where they were now, and UConn was the only place.

SUDEIKIS Fort Scott Community College was the height of my basketball and scholastic career. Which kind of segues into how you kindly invited me to go work out with you with [trainer] Chris Brickley two years ago.

STEWART That was great. We should go do that again.

SUDEIKIS I’ve never had any kind of masculine macho arrogance of, like, men’s sports versus women’s sports. But if any of that did ever course through my brain and body and soul, it would’ve been eliminated after that afternoon. You’re so good. Like, and you’re so effortlessly good. You’ve been so good for so long that you’re just iconic. … You’re like the Jennifer Aniston of the WNBA. You know what I mean?

STEWART Period! Yes. I want to be her. You’ve got to bring her to a game. OK? Thanks.

SUDEIKIS I would love to. I think she’s in London right now.

STEWART I’m going to write that in my notes: “Bring Jen Aniston to game.“ Handle that.

SUDEIKIS But as we were leaving [the workout], we were just chatting about where [the WNBA] was going, and all these eyeballs, which at least in the past four or five years, sort of gets pushed through the prism of Caitlin [Clark]. And you had said this really wise thing: “We’ve all wanted this success, but with success comes trouble.” And it makes me think of this Nietzsche quote [as paraphrased in Ted Lasso], “Once you’re at the top of the mountain, what’s left for you but lightning?” You, I think, personally have avoided a lot of that lightning. Why do you think some folks get it and some folks don’t?

STEWART I think that the discourse just comes because of the climate. It’s like, if you want the fame and the popularity and the notoriety and all that stuff, like you have to take the good with the bad.

SUDEIKIS What’s your relationship with social media? Because that is one of the turbo boosters with all of this.

STEWART I’m not doing that. I’m not looking for that. Are you? Do you look for that stuff?

SUDEIKIS No. I did for a little bit.

STEWART I control what I can control. I detach from judgment.

SUDEIKIS That’s a harder thing. It’s very intoxicating, new fame. That was one of those things that I got to view at SNL. If you go seek validation from it, then when they come for you on the other side of it, I think it could just destroy your soul, potentially.

STEWART Someone said to me, “Unless I’m going to go to these same people who are telling me how I’m bad at basketball and ask them how I should be parenting my kids, it doesn’t matter.”

SUDEIKIS We had our own version of backlash in our little neck of the woods with Ted Lasso. But the discourse doesn’t change the way we go about making the show, for better or worse. And I don’t know how much any of this stuff, these outside influences, affect a locker room.

STEWART Well, what I’m having to tell my teammates more and more is to make sure you’re prepared. Don’t let these questions catch you off guard. Obviously, there’s a lot of media surrounding the WNBA, and people are trying to kind of ride the wave, the trajectory of where we’re going. So, now, you’re not only thinking about the next game or next matchup or how am I going to get to the playoffs, but also you have to be ready for the questions that are going to come that are completely outside the court.

SUDEIKIS One thing I’ve noticed [going to WNBA games] is that negativity [in the stands], up until maybe this past season, gets rejected like a foreign body in the human.

STEWART I remember when you guys first came to the game. It was 2023. Things are going good, the energy at Barclays is incredible. It’s my first year there. And my teammates were like, “Ted Lasso’s here! We need to get a picture!” Then you brought your kids. You came back. And now, we’re your team.

SUDEIKIS A hundred percent, yeah. I remember you early on busting my balls about, like, “Who are you going to cheer for when we play against the [Indiana] Fever [Caitlin Clark’s team]?

STEWART Sorry, you can’t come in and cheer for the Fever. We’ll have you removed.

SUDEIKIS So you just won, what, your fourth gold medal?

STEWART My fourth World Cup medal.

SUDEIKIS I went on Wikipedia knowing we were going to do this, and holy moly, it takes three swipes to get through all your [achievements] from your high school days to three days ago. Like, when’s enough enough? (Laughs.)

STEWART It’s never enough. First of all, I want to beat [four-time WNBA champion, former UConn Husky and Stewart’s former Seattle Storm teammate] Sue [Bird]. So right now I’ve just tied Sue. [Editor’s note: Stewart beat Bird’s record the following week to become the league’s eighth all-time leading scorer.] I think winning is addicting. When you win awards and whatnot, you want to do it again, right? When we won here in New York, the parade was insane, and I want to do it again.

SUDEIKIS It’d be badass if we pulled it off this year.

STEWART Never say never. I plan on playing for a while. I’m newly 32. Virgo.

SUDEIKIS The Magic Johnson year.

STEWART Yeah, my Magic Johnson year. I want to just keep winning.

SUDEIKIS I want to ask you about your league, Unrivaled. What was the impetus? It reminds me of the heyday of United Artists and Charlie Chaplin. As I understand it, people were upset with the studio system, specifically actors and the artists themselves, and so they created United Artists. From the outside looking in, there’s a [similar] element to Unrivaled in giving power back to the player.

STEWART We’ve exceeded expectations. We have a valuation of $650 million. That’s higher than some WNBA valuations. With Unrivaled, we had the special opportunity to start something new, bring a platform back to the United States, back to our home market during the WNBA offseason, and also pay the players. Give them equity. A league made by players for players. And selling it [to investors] was hard. Like, when you have to sell your show, it’s hard, right? Nobody believes in it.

SUDEIKIS Oh my gosh, yeah. We went out to everyone, but only one place [bid for it], Apple.

STEWART Yeah. In the beginning, that was the hardest, because you have to get outside investors to believe something that’s just a blueprint. And they’re like, “Well, why is this going to work?” But it starts with the players that agreed to be in it in year one. The strength in numbers is the biggest thing in women’s basketball.

SUDEIKIS There was some quote from Del Close, who was an improv guru and a teacher I had for a year before he passed away: “The worst idea with full support will always beat the best idea with no support.” It’s the exact same thing as showbiz. You have this idea about, you know, this universe where people fight with lightsabers and it’s like, I don’t know. “Just do it and give me money on the back end with the action figures.” Like, “OK, dummy.” And then, ha ha, now he has a museum.

STEWART So, some people have said that Ted Lasso was dead [after season three].

SUDEIKIS Like, literally?

STEWART The show. Not the coach. Hopefully he does not have a heart attack or anything in the finale.

SUDEIKIS You’re going to have to watch.

STEWART But what made you want to focus on women’s soccer this season? Is it because of the rise in women’s sports?

SUDEIKIS It certainly helped open my eyes to it. It’s that experience of those seats we’ve had [at Liberty games at the Barclays Center] the last three seasons and watching these women walk on and off the court that just feels so … gooey with story complexity. When I thought [the show] was done, it really was done. But I just kept hearing the characters’ voices. So it was important for me to just keep jotting down these ideas, and at some point it became too silly — it would almost be selfish — to not do it.

STEWART So is there going to be a season five?

SUDEIKIS I don’t know. That was smooth. That was smooth.

STEWART That scene [in season four] when you went in the women’s locker room with the trash can on your head? That was funny. I really enjoyed that. If Ted Lasso was my coach for the Liberty, I think it would be funny.

SUDEIKIS I think we’d have a good time. I don’t know, would you be annoyed?

STEWART Maybe. I don’t know if I would be open-minded to some of your, um, practice tactics. I think I would be a little bit grumpy about that.

SUDEIKIS Sure. I’d hear that with open arms and an open heart. I’d be like, “All right. All right. Well, you won’t practice tomorrow.”

STEWART Great, we get the day off! I saw this thing where this basketball club overseas, Zalgiris, they want you to come coach there. Are you going to do it?

SUDEIKIS What, is it the Lithuanian team? Because Sudeikis is Lithuanian?

STEWART Yes. Are you going to go do that? You should do that. Doesn’t that sound cool?

SUDEIKIS It does sound cool. Will they pay for my flight? If I can bring Brendan [Hunt], who plays Coach Beard, I would literally do anything. So, I just literally found out that Cathy Engelbert, the WNBA commissioner, was stepping down. I would love for her, before she leaves, to give the thumbs-up on a Kansas City franchise.

STEWART Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

SUDEIKIS I know, I know, I know. But what would you want out of the next commissioner? It seems like a very difficult job.

STEWART I think it is a really difficult job. Honestly, Cathy has obviously gotten a lot of heat. But she deserves some praise, too, as she’s finishing because she helped get an incredible CBA [collective bargaining agreement] done. You can’t look around that. I think that the next commissioner obviously needs to have an incredible business mind because now we’re in the millions, billions type of industry. But also, you need to have some type of sports background just to navigate the space a little bit better. You think of [NBA Commissioner] Adam Silver, and he has a great relationship with the players. And not to say Cathy didn’t. I think that it just took time. It took a little bit longer than it needed to.

SUDEIKIS I don’t think you’re brought up enough in the MVP conversation this season.

STEWART Clock it.

SUDEIKIS You’re just quietly dominating. And I would love to get to a fourth scroll for you on Wikipedia.

STEWART I think people just get used to me being great all the time. And it’s expected, so when I do it all the time, it’s not that same brightness because it’s just consistently bright. But I’m definitely going to get you a fourth swipe on Wikipedia. I’m trying to break records here.

SUDEIKIS I appreciate it. Which record are you closest to getting the top spot on?

STEWART I need another gold medal in the World Cup to break Sue’s record. Diana [Taurasi] has five Olympic gold medals. Let’s just take one thing at a time. So see you in L.A. ’28.

This story appeared in the Oct. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.