She’s here. She’s there. She’s every-f’ing-where!
Since bursting onto our TV screens in 2020 as team owner Rebecca Welton on “Ted Lasso,” Hannah Waddingham has been on the fast track to where she should be, which is as many screens and stages as humanly possible.
At the moment, though, she’s about to be on Zoom. Even meeting Waddingham virtually, you have to wonder: Will she be as intimidatingly fabulous as she is on “Lasso”?
Her character contains multitudes, her impeccable power outfits armoring a vulnerable heart, but still: The lady is fierce.
Waddingham, on the other hand, is as welcoming as Rebecca is guarded.
“It looks like I’ve added some kind of lighting effect,” she says, gesturing toward the hint of disco glimmer in the room. “Because I’ve got a lamp with tassels over it.”
The British actress is fresh off a gig hosting the Olivier awards — check out the musical opening number on YouTube, and marvel at her singing pipes — and now she’s gearing up to co-host the wildly popular Eurovision Song Contest. The outfits, she says, are “going to be a little more flamboyant than usual.”
This is a woman who knows how to work a costume, whether it’s Rebecca’s cream-colored, form-fitting looks on “Lasso” or a nun’s habit on “Game of Thrones.”
Or, most recently, the feather-bedecked period dress of the scheming Lady Bellaston on Masterpiece’s new miniseries adaptation of “Tom Jones.”
The 18th-century Henry Fielding novel, known as one of the first literary rom-coms, follows the adventures of a generous, amorous lad and the various women he encounters; Lady Bellaston is an older woman who first seduces Tom, but eventually develops a genuine crush.
The original 1963 film starred Albert Finney and hummed with a bawdy, free-love vibe. Waddingham appreciates that this version goes subtler.
“It’s very easy to play the devious cougar and the funny, funny, funny,” she says of her character. “But I wanted to show that when she accidentally falls for Tom, which has very much blindsided her, she doesn’t know how to cope. She has never had to look at any part of herself in an emotionally mature way.”
Waddingham, whose mother and grandparents were opera singers, had a successful career in West End theater before TV roles came calling. She wondered if it made her almost too well suited to this part.
“Is it too much of an obvious route to have someone from the theater playing this theatrical role? I said to [director Georgia Parris], ‘You get that as a given: I will make sure that the dresses move right, and the posture is right in all the scenes. But are you happy for me to lean into her not knowing how to cope?’”
Parris was, and “Tom Jones” is so much the better for Waddingham’s nuanced take.
“Not knowing how to cope” has also been a major through line on “Ted Lasso,” you may have noticed.
Waddingham was one of the cast members who visited the White House earlier this spring for a summit on mental health awareness with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden.
“To walk through that famous door, and to spend time, all of us, talking about our own fears, our own mental health, and have the president and the first lady very much vocal and open about their own — that’s how conversations have to start,” she says. Waddingham even posed next to Michelle Obama’s portrait, flexing toned biceps — a nod to a “Ted Lasso” line comparing the two.
It’s been a jam-packed year of them for the Emmy-winning Waddingham; “booked and busy” hardly covers it.
“Completely insane,” she agrees happily. “And I have to remind myself that this is the level of work, and contribution to what’s happening in entertainment, that I have craved for so many years.”
This is not to say she was unappreciated in her pre-“Lasso” years.
She slayed as the Lady of the Lake in the Monty Python musical “Spamalot,” and has been nominated for three Olivier awards.
She played an uptight mom on the Netflix series “Sex Education,” and then there was that gig as the bell-ringing “Shame!” nun on “Game of Thrones,” a scene which has now become one of the truly best memes of all time.
“I actually quite like the fact that people still can’t believe that was me,” she says with a laugh. Her character, Septa Unella, sports a rough-hewn habit and a makeup-less face; it would be difficult to conceive a role more diametrically opposed to that of Rebecca.
But her Emmy-winning “Ted Lasso” turn has also involved deeply emotional work: illustrating the aftermath of a verbally abusive relationship.
Rebecca is still reeling from her years with Rupert (Anthony Head), the billionaire ex-husband whose cruelty fueled her revenge-hire of Ted in the first season. It’s a subject the actress understands firsthand.
“To walk through that famous door, and to spend time, all of us, talking about our own fears, our own mental health, and have the president and the first lady very much vocal and open about their own — that’s how conversations have to start.”
Hannah Waddingham
“Having lived it myself, four years on from my verbally abusive relationship, I have flickers of it that come and attack me all the time,” she says. “And I don’t think we should shy away from any of it. Why should I be on the red carpet at the Emmys being all sparkly and glowy, and not show the other side?”
She attributes much of the series’ impact to its ability to openly deal with trauma and mental health struggles alongside the quips and puns.
“The show has to go there to allow us the luxury of having the funny moments,” she says. “I think that’s why it’s captured everyone’s heart, because you feel wrung out in every way. As life does.”
While the future of “Ted Lasso” is up in the air — star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis has been vague about plans for a fourth season — Waddingham has shot parts in two of next year’s biggest action movies (a reimagining of “The Fall Guy” and Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part 2”) and voices a character in a new, Chris Pratt-starring “Garfield” movie.
She’ll also star in a musical special for Apple — “Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas” — to be recorded live at the London Coliseum. (“It’s a humdinger!”)
Her latest projects have been “Lasso”-esque for their ubiquity of kind, like-minded colleagues.
“I had that on ‘The Fall Guy.’ Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, just utterly positive, sunshiny, affirming human beings,” she says. “You can’t help but feed off that energy. And I have to say, the same with the big Mr. Cruise! Just glorious. Hugely inspiring, inclusive, utterly present and positive.”
She brought that vibe to our shoot, channeling old-school glamour “skewing towards a ’50s, ‘Stepford Wives’ kind of look, because I’m an old-fashioned shape,” she says, “but then deconstructed. A done up, but undone, kind of thing.”
She and our photographer got along famously, except when he accidentally stumbled on her last name. This, it turns out, happens so much she brought it up in her opening monologue at the Oliviers.
“I went, ‘My name is Hannah Waddingham. Waddingham. Not Waddington!’ Like I’ve been called all my career.”
For now, she’s embracing the madness of her schedule alongside the joy and hard work of being a single mom to her 8-year-old daughter.
“All I want is just to spend time with her; she’s absolutely my best friend,” says Waddingham. “I try to get her to come with me as much as possible, because when I was younger, I would go with my own mother and be at the London Coliseum with her.”
This summer will, possibly, bring a bit of time off. “And then I will collapse in a small heap with my girl, somewhere sunny … and see if she’ll let me have five minutes to myself to read a book!”
