“I Feel Like I’m Learning on the Job”: Nick Mohammed Is Making the Most of Feeling Restless

From close-up magic gigs as a teenager to Ted Lasso, and now his latest turn as Under Armour’s new poster boy, the British actor and comedian has built a career on never staying in one lane for too long.

Nick Mohammed has always had a few tricks up his sleeve — quite literally, at one point. Long before Ted Lasso propelled him onto screens around the world, he spent years cutting his teeth on close-up magic and comedy, learning the peculiar art of winning over a room in real time. More than two decades later, that instinct for keeping people entertained has taken him somewhere even he might not have predicted: a sun-soaked hotel in Marbella, surrounded by athletes, fronting Under Armour’s latest campaign.

“I find it quite exciting and thrilling that you can go into different environments and work with different people and in different genres of entertainment and learn something new from the people around you,” he tells Man About Town. It’s an outlook that has served him well. Set against the fictional Hotel Armouré, the campaign sees Mohammed step into the role of hotel manager as a colourful cast of Under Armour athletes checks in for an eventful stay — including Ferran Torres, Fermín López and Ollie Watkins, alongside artist Rilès and social creator Sharky.

That appetite for the unfamiliar has quietly defined Mohammed’s career. His rise has been less a straight path than a series of pivots and moments of recalibration, something he speaks about with refreshing pragmatism. Failure, or at least learning how to move through it, has proved as formative as any success. Reflecting on the campaign’s “Rest Less” ethos, he considers the tension between always wanting to move forward and knowing when to stop. “You have to switch off and be comfortable with where you are and be happy because there can be so many reasons why you might succeed or fail in this industry, not all of which are within your control.”

If Ted Lasso introduced Mohammed to the fervour of the sporting world, it also gave audiences a different side of him, as Nate Shelley transformed from the quietly endearing kit man into one of the show’s central figures. And as a new season of the hit TV show peeks over the horizon, he sits down with Man About Town to unpack what lies ahead.

Your career started as a performer, doing close-up magic before moving into comedy and then landing your role in Ted Lasso, which brought you into the world of sports. Now starring in this campaign for Under Armour, what was that journey like transitioning from magic to comedy to acting to dipping your toes into sports?

Dipping my toes is very much the right expression. I would not say that I started out in life as the most sporty type…

Fictional sports!

Yeah, I’m very good at fictional sports. As a kid, I was really into magic, and worked as a close-up magician for years to pay my way through college. At university, I got into comedy and would audition to be involved in the university sketch groups, which didn’t always work out. I auditioned twice for the Durham Revue, and I didn't get in. I had magic to fall back on, and I would perform a lot as a magician; gradually, comedy crept more and more into these performances, and then eventually the magic was at the fringe of my act. It became character comedy through and through. Eventually, having an agent and casting directors come to the shows led to acting. I was known for popping up in sitcoms, and it was only really with Ted Lasso onwards that I was able to start to tackle slightly more dramatic or emotional storytelling. Since then, it’s been quite nice to be able to take on or audition for roles which are slightly more against the type that I’d done previously, so I’ll be forever grateful for that. It’s also in the world of sport, which led to this Under Armour campaign.

What was it like being on set for that campaign?

It was really fun. Like any new job, you’re a little bit nervous, especially if you’re fronting something, and particularly for a commercial shoot where you are quite limited on time. Everyone was so nice. I thought the scripts were really funny, and I was able to improvise quite a lot on the day, which felt like a luxury given the time pressure. 

This campaign is all about a “Rest Less” mentality. How do you personally relate to that? Are you someone who’s able to switch off, or are you always working?

I can enjoy downtime, but it sometimes takes a bit of time to wind down from something, especially if you’ve been working on a job that’s been particularly intense or long. You get into a routine and mindset to get that work done, and so when it does end, with filming and I can imagine probably with sports as well, you do have to tell yourself to wind down and decompress. It’s funny in the context of the campaign because it’s taken to this extreme where you have all these sports people doing all these kinds of extreme things at this hotel, which I personally probably wouldn’t advocate for.

 You’ve mentioned that you weren’t the most sporty child, but did you play any sports growing up, and what role do they play in your life now, either as a supporter or as a competitor?

I really liked tennis growing up, and I was into football a little bit because my dad was such a big fan, so I definitely got dragged along to a lot of games. It’s one of those things where one of your parents is really into something, and occasionally you want to rebel and be like, “I’m not into this, I’m above all this.” I was quite a geeky kid, quite academic, into magic tricks, playing the violin, and things like that. It’s strange because as soon as you become immersed in something, and Ted Lasso is a prime example of this, you can’t help but become infected by other people’s enthusiasm for it. 

In the campaign, you play a hotel manager, and that’s a role that requires wearing a lot of different hats. You’ve had a lot of personal experience with that, working across many different areas. Have you found that your skills from previous things translated into new ventures?

I think both comedy and magic [are quite transferable] actually. Often there’s nowhere to hide. If you do a magic trick and it doesn’t work, then you haven’t done your job, and similarly if you’re billing yourself as a comedian and you can’t make people laugh, then you’ve also not done your job. That’s not to say that you can’t fail, because obviously part of the journey is failing, and providing that you can constructively learn from that, then that’s good. You are very vulnerable as a comedian and as a magician, that relationship with the audience is one of trust. [You end up] developing a bit of a thick skin, which you definitely need for acting. Because I never went to drama school, I still feel like I’m learning on the job a little bit. I find it quite exciting and thrilling that you can go into different environments and work with different people and in different genres of entertainment and learn something new from the people around you. 

Your role in Ted Lasso gave you some experience with fictional coaching. Was there anything from playing that role or from the show in general that you’ve applied to your own life?

In terms of coaching, I don’t know if Nate’s coaching style was that good. It’s quite results-focused and intense and unkind, actually. I feel like that whole “be curious, not judgmental” and “be a goldfish”, all these motifs that are so rife in the show, are quite good. 

You’ve done a lot in your career as a performer, from magic to comedy and acting, but is there anything else that you’d like to have a go at? Do you have a bit of a desire to go into coaching, even if it is a little league team?

It’s funny because Cristo Fernández, who plays Danni Rojas, has become a pro. He’s put acting on hold to become a pro footballer, which is absolutely brilliant and extraordinary really, sort of art imitating life. Would I go into coaching? You know, I went back to my old university last week to give a talk to some students, and it was nice to go back and tell people, “Don’t worry about failing, failing is part of the journey” and of course you have to learn from it constructively, and you can’t successively fail without learning from it, but it felt nice to be able to talk with some degree of experience… but I’m hardly an expert.

You were pretty established and known, or at least your character [Mr. Swallow] was, in the UK, but Ted Lasso opened you up to a much broader international audience. How have you found the American reception to British humour?

Now, especially with streaming platforms, we’re seeing all the American shows and the US is seeing all the British shows, so there’s not as big of a tonal divide or tonal shift as there might have been in the past. When I first performed live comedy out there, I did a couple of gigs in New York, and season two of Ted Lasso was already out, so I was already established to a degree, or at least Americans knew who I was through the show, but none of them had seen me do live comedy before, and certainly not character comedy. I was a little bit concerned about how that might go down because it's such a gear shift from Nate in Ted Lasso, but they’re a comedy audience – they’re there to see comedy. The New York comedy scene has so much alternative comedy as well, so it’s not that alien of an idea that someone is playing a character. You have to make sure that your first five to 10 minutes are very strong, and then you get them on your side, and you can take them on a journey with you.

With the fourth season of Ted Lasso coming out, how are you feeling about returning to that world? 

Season four comes out in August, which is really exciting. I can’t reveal whether Nate is going to be in that season or not; I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m really excited to see the show; it’s about the women’s football team, so it’s a whole different group of players, different cast, and I can’t wait. 

Beyond that, what are you excited for this year? What’s next?

Coming up for me, I’ve got a lot of written projects on the ball. I’ve just wrapped series two of War, which is a new Sky HBO show. We shot two seasons back to back; I think the first one is coming out in October. It’s a legal drama, which is really fun. I recorded my tour Show Pony as a special for NBC Universal, and I’ve just been sent the first cut and delivered the first set of edit notes on that, so that’s exciting. I’m hoping that will be out by the end of the year. Various other things in the pipeline, lots of writing. I feel very lucky and grateful for shows like Lasso and alike.