'What a ball-buster!'

Juno Temple, the comic spark in Ted Lasso, relishes her new role as the no-nonsense assistant who got The Godfather made...by confronting mob bosses

- Ryan Gilbey

It is five in the afternoon and Juno Temple is giving off slumber-party vibes. Curled up close to her webcam, blond hair cascading everywhere, she is on a bed surrounded by cushions in a friend's west London flat. This is home for the 32-year-old actor when she's in town from Los Angeles to shoot Ted Lasso, the smash-hit sitcom about an ebullient US coach (Jason Sudeikis) managing an English football team. Temple plays Keeley, a smarter-than-shelooks Wag who runs her own PR company.

The show is midway through shooting its third season. Temple hasn't been filming today, though she did just receive rewrites for the next episode. "Sometimes they arrive the morning you're filming," she says brightly. "Keeps the brain ticking!"

What's on her mind right now, however, is her new series, which dramatises the making of The Godfather. She squeals the show's title back at me when I mention it - "The Offer!". Temple has good reason to be excited. The Offer is a prestigious 10-part drama for Paramount+, its title a reference to the threat made by the mafia boss Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) in the 1972 gangster masterpiece: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse... "The series is full of juicy stories, mostly involving the Paramount producer Robert Evans (a show-stealing Matthew Goode), who was opposed to casting the newcomer Al Pacino, as well as an assortment of mobsters determined to prevent their good name being besmirched.