Ted Lasso star Nick Mohammed and Inside No. 9 star and co-creator Steve Pemberton will be part of Taskmaster series 17's cast.
Following the Taskmaster Champion of Champions 3 special on Sunday night (January 14), Channel 4 has confirmed the five-strong lineup for the next series with a first look at the cast and their task outfits. Mohammed's official photo and the first-look clip for series 17 suggest that he is completing at least one (if not all) of his pre-recorded tasks dressed as a vampire.
He and Pemberton will be joined by Joanne McNally, Sophie Willan and John Robins for the new series of Taskmaster, which is expected to air in the first half of 2024.
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Mohammed joins the Taskmaster contestant lineup fresh from his award-nominated role as football kitman-turned-coach Nathan 'Nate' Shelley in Apple TV+ comedy-drama Ted Lasso.
He is a double Emmy award nominee, and shared a Screen Actors' Guild win for Best Ensemble with the Ted Lasso cast in 2022.
Towards the end of 2023, Mohammed reunited with a number of his Ted Lasso co-stars in Hannah Waddingham's Christmas special for the streaming service, and also voiced Dr Fry in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Later this year, he'll star in Renegade Nell on Disney+.
Mohammed is also the creator of Sky's sitcom Intelligence – starring in it alongside David Schwimmer – and he brought his Mr Swallow character back to the London stage last autumn.
Pemberton first rose to fame as a co-star and co-creator of The League of Gentlemen with his Inside No. 9 collaborator Reece Shearsmith, plus Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson.
In addition to their successful radio and TV shows as The League of Gentlemen, the group won the Edinburgh Comedy Awards' main prize in 1997.
Pemberton appeared on the West End stage last year in The Pillowman alongside Lily Allen and Paul Kaye.
He also sets cryptic crosswords for The Guardian under the pseudonym Sphinx – which led to intense speculation that he'd be taking part in a future series on the Taskmaster subreddit.
A crossword featured in the September 27, 2023 edition of the paper – during the week the show taped its studio segments – contained a message in its odd-numbered columns reading "Greg, please give Steve all five points", as spotted by the Fifteen Squared blog.
This left Taskmaster fans wondering whether it was a clever confirmation of Pemberton taking part, or potentially even part of a task for the new series.
Willan is perhaps best known to TV audiences for creating and starring in the BBC sitcom Alma's Not Normal, which is inspired by her own experiences of the care system. Late last year, she confirmed filming has now wrapped on its second series.
Following her BAFTA TV Awards win in 2022 for her performance in Alma's Not Normal, Willan appeared in the second series of Time for the BBC as a prison inmate named Maeve. She also narrated Channel 4 reality series The Circle.
Robins co-hosts a weekly BBC Radio 5 Live show with Elis James. The duo also present How Do You Cope?, a podcast where celebrity guests talk about their lived experiences of challenging situations in their lives, with past topics including physical or mental health difficulties, addiction, trauma and bereavement.
Robins was the joint winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards' main prize in 2017 with Hannah Gadsby.
He co-hosts the YouTube channel Bad Golf with Taskmaster creator and co-host Alex Horne, and has recently been touring his latest standup show, Howl, which reflects on his recovery from alcoholism and sobriety journey to date.
His Taskmaster participation had also been strongly rumoured when fans of the show spotted he'd rescheduled some live shows during late September, appearing to free him up for series 17's studio filming dates.
The extended first-look teaser for series 17 also offers a glimpse at Robins' task outfit, which includes a yellow jacket matching the one worn by Freddie Mercury at Live Aid (he is on record as a huge fan of the band).
McNally was a guest contestant on Channel 4's The Big Fat Quiz of Everything in 2022, and co-hosts a podcast with reality star Vogue Williams, called My Therapist Ghosted Me. She's touring the US with her live stand-up show between February and April 2024.
The two friends also collaborated on an E4 special titled Joanne and Vogue's Sex Drive, which aired last year.
Several months ago, McNally posted a picture gallery on Instagram with photos that show the Taskmaster lab's plastic curtains in the background – and she's wearing the same jumpsuit in the teaser trailer, too.
Taskmaster series 17 is expected to premiere in the first half of 2024, airing and streaming on Channel 4.
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Kate (they/she) is a freelance writer, editor, digital editorial trainer and data technician who first joined Digital Spy as an overnight freelance sub-editor in January 2011, after studying a postgraduate diploma in journalism at Salford University while working part-time as a social researcher.
In July 2013, Kate joined the DS staff team as chief sub-editor and following six years as the site's managing editor, their role expanded to incorporate Hearst UK's entertainment portfolio (including Digital Spy and its sibling titles Best and Inside Soap) between late 2024 and early 2026.
Kate has worked as a writer and editor since 2006, with bylines syndicated across the Hearst network and at organisations including Metro. They started their career as a TV production runner for the BBC and contributed to various music websites, blogs and zines while based in Manchester.
During her time at DS, Kate has previously been a freelance sub-editor and chief sub-editor.
Kate's team at Digital Spy were proudly nominated in the Best Subbing/Production Team category at the BSME Talent Awards 2022. Over the years, she has contributed to coverage of many, many Prime Days and Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and was part of the team that launched the DS weekly TV newsletter in November 2019 – followed by the Top of the Shops e-commerce newsletter in May 2024.
Kate's screen passions include Taskmaster (their biggest career regret remains turning down the opportunity to visit the house), nature documentaries, and live sport (up there with the greatest of all soap operas although if asked to choose, it's Corrie… every time).
Her highlights while working at DS have included interviewing Stevie Nicks on the red carpet for her documentary In Your Dreams, sitting at a press roundtable with Formula 1 commentary icon Murray Walker, watching a life-sized LEGO car being driven around Silverstone, writing an album-by-album retrospective of Lady Gaga's genre-defying career for Living Legends, and raising awareness of receiving and understanding a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis through the lens of Bianca and Freddie's EastEnders storyline.
Upon remembering to log off the internet, Kate enjoys live theatre, dance and comedy, appreciating nature, baking (badly), tending a recently-rented allotment (equally badly) and pampering one very spoiled rescue cat named Jolene.
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