Phil Dunster Keeps Getting Cast as the Guy You're Supposed to Hate

The English actor who made Jamie Tartt a reluctant fan favorite has graduated to something reportedly less redeemable in Apple TV+ thriller 'Rooster,' and he is leaning into it.

Phil Dunster, 35, broke out playing arrogant footballer Jamie Tartt across all three seasons of 'Ted Lasso' on Apple TV+.
His follow-up role in 'Rooster' casts him as a villain whose arc culminates in a finale described by Dunster himself as a string of terrible decisions.
Dunster told The Hollywood Reporter that 'Ted Lasso' taught him the mechanics of redeeming an asshole, knowledge he is now applying in reverse.
The 'Rooster' finale aired without the character arriving at the redemption beat audiences were trained by 'Ted Lasso' to expect.
Dunster is currently navigating the specific career problem of being very good at roles the audience needs to dislike.

Phil Dunster spent three seasons on “Ted Lasso” teaching audiences to forgive a footballer with a personality deficit. The curriculum, it turns out, transferred.

Dunster, 35, told The Hollywood Reporter in a feature published this week that playing Jamie Tartt gave him a working theory of villain rehabilitation. The theory does not appear to have survived contact with his next project.

In “Rooster,” also on Apple TV+, Dunster plays a character whose moral trajectory runs in the other direction. The finale, by his own account, delivers a sequence of decisions that do not resolve into growth. He described the endpoint to THR without apparent distress.

The interview spends considerable space on the craft of playing men audiences are meant to find repellent, a subject on which Dunster has accumulated specific credentials. He noted the difference between a character structured to be redeemed and one structured to demonstrate what happens when redemption does not arrive on schedule.

“Rooster” appears to be the latter. Dunster did not sound troubled by the distinction.

His publicist did not respond to a request for comment by press time. The Jamie Tartt jersey, meanwhile, remains the bestselling item in the AFC Richmond online store.