Nick Mohammed is particularly good at awkwardness, giving supporting characters enough feeling to matter beyond the joke. We rate the patient character work in Ted Lasso more highly than the mild comedy of his Dr Fry in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
Fi1m perspective
In Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023), the hens wear fixed smiles as they waddle towards a door, and Dr Fry is the scientist responsible. We were unsettled by those happy faces, which the film holds on longer than we expected. Mohammed voices Fry with a mild, sitcom sort of comedy, alongside Peter Serafinowicz as Reginald Smith. They are funny, but the film cannot keep that chill going. It is an agreeable piece of supporting work, though the hens tell us more about what is wrong with this farm than either of the men running it.
The supporting credits alone give an incomplete picture of his work: Tim Grimes in Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015), then Piglet's voice in Christopher Robin (2018). He also developed Mr Swallow, the recurring high-voiced magician performed on stage, radio and television. That character sits some distance from the non-verbal acting he would bring to Nathan Shelley. In Intelligence (2020), he plays Joseph Harries alongside David Schwimmer and is also the sitcom's writer and creator. The useful turn for us, though, comes with the longer character work in Ted Lasso (2020).
Nathan Shelley became his international breakthrough, and the role makes good use of his physical and non-verbal acting. Mohammed is good at awkwardness because he does not make it the only thing there is to know about the person; his performance develops rather than simply repeating a comic manner. He works within a responsive ensemble alongside Jason Sudeikis, whose warmth carries the programme through an uneven supply of jokes. The cultural clashes can feel laboured, and we would not pretend that subtle acting fixes the writing whenever that happens. Start with Ted Lasso, and be prepared to wait for the next good joke.
Biography
Nicholas George Mohammed (born 1980) is a British actor, comedian and writer. He created, wrote and starred in the Sky One comedy series Intelligence (2020–2023), also appearing alongside David Schwimmer.
He is best known internationally for playing Nathan Shelley in the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso (2020–2023), a role for which he received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2021 and 2022. His other screen credits include voice roles as Piglet in Christopher Robin (2018) and Dr Fry in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023), as well as appearances in The Martian (2015), Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) and Slow Horses (2022).
