‘An overnight success after 25 years? Delicious’: Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham on sexism, stunts and stardom at 51 — SkimNews
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- Hannah Waddingham, now 51, returned to host SNL UK two days before the interview, performing in nearly every sketch including an opening monologue built around accents and impressions
- Ted Lasso returns for a fourth season three years after season 3, with a women's football team at its center — Waddingham reprises Rebecca Welton, the club owner she has called 'like losing a friend' to step away from
- Ride or Die, Waddingham's new comedy-drama, co-stars Octavia Spencer and casts Waddingham as an undercover assassin who drinks heavily and jumps out of a first-floor window to dodge a one-night stand
- Waddingham rejected reductive 'camp' and 'northern barmaid' labels for her persona, telling the interviewer: 'It's switch-on-able, and switch-off-able... there's just a lot more to me than that'
- Waddingham defended England goalkeeper Mary Earps against the backlash over her autobiography's comments on Sarina Wiegman and Hannah Hampton, calling the criticism 'unfathomable'
- At the 2024 Olivier Awards, a photographer asked Waddingham to 'show leg' on the red carpet; she called him out on camera and he later emailed an apology, which she accepted
Why it matters: Waddingham is one of the most visible 50-something women leading a Hollywood career resurgence — her Ted Lasso Emmy in 2021 came after decades of stage work — and her explicit refusal to be flattened into 'camp' or 'northern barmaid' reads as a pointed pushback against the same reductive framing that still dogs women like Earps in football and women on entertainment red carpets.
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