Nick Mohammed, the Ted Lasso actor (and the performer featured in the May 2025 issue of Genii), has a nice piece in The Guardian talking about his love of magic, including how he created his comedy magician persona, Mr. Swallow.
The piece, which showcases him recreating a photo of himself from when he was 9 years old and sitting on top of a horse, talks about how magic helped save him from bullying.
Harriet Gibsone
“I realized that even the well-built 15-year-old lads—who’d normally try to clock me on the head with a meterstick—would do anything I wanted if I could show them a vanishing handkerchief,” he said.
Nick, who paid his way through college through magic gigs, also shared that his Mr. Swallow persona, who he describes as a “camp magician and a bit of clown,” was initially based on an English teacher he had who was “inspiring, brilliant, and absolutely crackers.”
He also shared that he initially declined playing Nate Shelley on Ted Lasso. “Nate sounded too similar to my character in Intelligence—a low-status sidekick guy—and I didn’t want to repeat myself. But then [Ted Lasso cocreator] Bill Lawrence called me personally to ask me to do it—he explained my storyline, which was far more interesting than I’d realized for a supporting role.”
And finally, when asked what he thought the 9-year-old version of himself would think of him now, he said that “he would be amazed that my job is standing onstage and doing an impression of a school teacher doing magic tricks. It’s a dream come true that still brings me so much joy—because whenever I do magic, I feel exactly as I did as a child: like anything is possible.”