I’m totally honest with Phil Dunster. My husband is his biggest fan. So much so, that he insisted on writing all of my questions. A huge Apple TV success story, Ted Lasso, in which Dunster stars, has garnered an almost cult-like following, having been nominated for 20 Primetime Emmy awards since its debut season in 2020, of which it won seven.

The show sees an American football coach hired to manage a British football team, with Dunster starring as arrogant player Jamie Tartt – whom you ultimately can’t help but root for. While it’s not technically an English show (it was developed by big-name American creators Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly), it is culturally British through-and-through.

Speaking virtually, Dunster, born in Northampton and privately schooled in Reading, comes across well-educated and well-spoken. Tartt, on the other hand, is beloved for his Mancunian accent, non-sensical ‘poopeh!’ catchphrase, and notorious self-adopted Baby Shark crowd chant. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for Dunster to be minding his own business on the London Underground only to hear the ominous ‘doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo’ (if you have young children, or grandchildren, you’ll know).

“It’s quite unnerving, actually,” says the 33-year-old. “I’ll be sitting on a train carriage and someone, somewhere, will start humming Baby Shark under their breath.” Testament to the popularity of the show, Dunster finds himself being increasingly recognised. At the start of this year, it was while he was hiking up a mountain in Sri Lanka. Last week, someone at the gym stopped him for a selfie – while he was walking to the shower in a towel. “I thought maybe it wasn’t the best time for a picture!” he laughs. “Still, at the end of the day, it’s just people showing their love.”

As anyone who has seen the show will know, Ted Lasso isn’t a programme about football. “It’s as much about football as Heated Rivalry is about hockey,” says Dunster. “Although slightly more family friendly”, he laughingly points out. “Ultimately, it’s about a load of men trying to be the best versions of themselves.”

Dunster and I are speaking in the same week as Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary Manosphere airs. Dunster is keen to address the urgency for real, relatable, imperfect but inherently good role models in popular culture, and the danger of click-bait caricatures.

“Shows like Ted Lasso are a call to arms,” he says. “It’s complicated being a man, or anyone else for that matter, in the world today – navigating the geo-political bonfire. The characters in Ted portray strength and leadership with kindness. It’s so important to give space and time for that sort of narrative.”

In March, Dunster was back on our screens in Rooster. The HBO comedy series stars Steve Carell as Greg Russo, a divorced fiction author from Florida who visits an East Coast college campus where his adult daughter, Katie, is a professor whose husband, Dunster, has just left her for a graduate student.

Much like Tartt, you’re geared up to hate Dunster’s character, Archie Bates, an over-achieving, 30-something college professor who has just cheated on his gorgeous, intelligent wife. And yet, as early as the first episode, in which Bates’ on-screen partner Charly accidentally burns his house down with a prized first-edition of War and Peace, you realise you’re probably going to like the schmuck.

“As an actor, you’re always having to justify the characters you play. And with both Jamie and Archie, you probably wouldn’t want to be either of their mates when you first meet them,” says Dunster. “But you’ve got to look at why they are how they are. They both enjoyed incredible success in their respective fields at a very young age and have never entertained any other idea than deserving a rarefied life. Jamie was a top footballer, which is basically a modern-day gladiator. They live and die by their last performance. The result is either adoration or loathing. It’s almost impossible for a normal person to understand [that kind of fandom]. Both shows address these complex but universal themes in a fun, peculiar and accessible way.”

Rooster received positive reviews on launch, with critics signalling out Dunster’s performance and Carell’s signature comedic edge. How was it working alongside the loveable Hollywood giant? Is Carell as nice as we all hope he is? “He is,” confirms Dunster (phew). “He’s incredibly engaging and socially charitable. His family are the centre point of his turning world. He’s super up for other people being funny and gets nothing but joy from others taking the laughs.”

On their first day filming, Carell offered Dunster some tickets to a hockey game he could no longer attend. “Throughout filming, most members of the cast and crew got given those tickets at some point. It’s just something he does. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

Today, Dunster is an actor whose star is on the rise. But a career in entertainment was never a given. Both his father and brother served in the military. It was a path that Dunster considered for himself, especially after a failed trial for the rugby club London Irish. “At school I was just terrible at anything academic,” he says, nevertheless having been made Head Boy at Leighton Park. It was a BA in Acting from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School that convinced him to pursue a career in drama. Dunster’s father was never more excited than when his son landed the top-dog role in Strike Back, the Sky One MI6 series based on the novel of the same name by former Special Air Service soldier Chris Ryan.

These days, Dunster’s love of sport finds expression in golf – “perhaps it’s a mid-life crisis kind of thing?” – and staying up all night to watch the Ashes, the stress of which he dares to compare to having a newborn baby. “A love of sport is in relation to other people,” he says. “It’s the sense of camaraderie. For me, maybe it’s also about structure and support, drawing on that military influence – if we really want to be Freudian about it.”

Dunster’s performance in Ted Lasso earned him a 2023 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. The award was eventually won by The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Nonetheless, Dunster credits the nomination as a milestone moment. “It was an incredible, wonderful feeling, and confirmation of such a tectonic shift. I was in a car park when I found out, and my friend and I started jumping up and down screaming. A car drove past with the windows down and screamed ‘shut the f*** up!’” We both agree that it couldn’t be a more London response to a display of overt enthusiasm.

Currently living in East London with his wife, the director Ellie Heydon, Dunster can most regularly be found wandering around London Fields or Broadway Market. If not there, then Soho, where he can’t resist a stop at Hideaway Coffee House. Away from screen and sport, Dunster is also very into his cooking. “Butter bean-based stews this week,” he says, “praying at the altar” of Meera Sodha’s Dinner and East cookbooks, both of which are inspired by veggie-led dishes from East and South Asia. The novel currently on his nightstand is David Szalay’s Booker Prize-winning Flesh, while banking drama Industry and Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are two of his most-recent streamed series.

What will Instagram’s Explore page have Dunster doomscrolling? “Hmmm, mostly cats meeting in the street and making funny noises,” he says. “And people with weird face filters.” Strange, I’ve never been targeted with either of these niche peculiarities, I say. “When you go down that cute cat rabbit hole it’s a hell of a ride,” Dunster assures me.

I’m intrigued. But, as Lasso himself would say, I’ll choose to “be curious, not judgmental.” Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Read more: Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy on finding their inner children