‘An overnight success after 25 years? Delicious’: Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham on sexism, stunts and stardom at 51
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- Ted Lasso returns for Season 4 three years after Season 3, centering on a women's football team after Juno Temple's Keeley handed the squad to Rebecca in the Season 3 finale
- Hannah Waddingham hosted Saturday Night Live UK two days before the interview, taking part in almost all sketches including an opening monologue showcasing accents and impressions
- Waddingham co-stars with Octavia Spencer in new series Ride or Die, playing an undercover assassin who loves drinking and men, and jumps out of a first-floor window in the first episode
- At the 2024 Olivier Awards, Waddingham confronted a paparazzo who told her to "show leg," responding "You wouldn't say that to a man, my friend" in a clip that went viral
- Waddingham rejected the labels "camp" and "northern barmaid," saying her Apple TV Christmas special and RuPaul's Drag Race Rusical judging draw from musical theatre, not camp
- Waddingham said she is "more into women's football than men's," calling Lionesses Leah Williamson and Jill Scott "pioneers for my daughter's generation" and expressing "incredulity" at the backlash Mary Earps faced over her autobiography
- Waddingham followed Ted Lasso with roles in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opposite Tom Cruise and The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt
Why it matters: Ted Lasso's pivot to a women's football team for Season 4 puts Waddingham's Rebecca Welton at the center of a notable creative departure from three seasons of men's-football storytelling. Her viral Olivier Awards confrontation and explicit pushback against 'camp' and 'barmaid' labels position her as an outspoken voice in how women in entertainment are framed past 50.
