Bullied as a teen, Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham found success in midlife

The Age

3 days ago

This story is part of the July 13 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories.
Hannah Waddingham has just returned from rubbing shoulders in Cannes. Dressed in a burgundy suit, black bra and stilettos, she looks as if she's come straight from the film festival's red carpet. 'Cannes is a completely different beast,' she says. 'Walking up plenty of stairs in the gown is a bit like, 'Don't be the wanker who falls!' That's a lot of pink taffeta up in the air.' Has she face-planted on a red carpet before? 'No, but what I'm saying is, people shouldn't think that I'm endlessly confident because I'm absolutely not. I'm just good at styling it out.'
Ever since Waddingham found fame five years ago playing Rebecca Welton, the tough but vulnerable owner of AFC Richmond on the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso, I've had her pegged in the 'endlessly confident' category. 'That's easy to think when I'm six-foot, two in heels,' she says, sitting down for lunch. 'I have massive impostor syndrome all the time.'
The pinch-me movie-star existence has been a long time coming for the single mother-of-one. For two decades, Waddingham was a leading lady in the West End, with three Olivier nominations to prove it – Spamalot, A Little Night Music, Kiss Me, Kate. But it was the gentle football comedy Ted Lasso that kicked her career into the premier league, and scooped her an Emmy award for best supporting actress in 2021. Since then, she has bounced between making Hollywood blockbusters (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, The Fall Guy, Lilo & Stitch) and hosting primetime gigs.
These days, the actor is almost inescapable but, throughout her 30s, she struggled to make the leap from stage to screen. 'I could not get arrested on British television at all,' she recalls.
In 2014, after more than a decade of piddly screen parts alongside her theatre career, Waddingham landed a recurring role in the ITV sitcom Benidorm and, the following year, played Septa Unella, the taciturn nun ('Shame! Shame!' ) in Game of Thrones. Then came Sex Education, in which she played a lesbian mum, Ted Lasso and global fame erroneously described as 'overnight'.
In her hustling years, her 180cm height had often been cited as a factor in not getting cast. 'You'll be too big on camera so stay in your lane,' she says, recalling the general sentiment. Thankfully Jason Sudeikis, the 185cm creator and star of Ted Lasso, was happy for Waddingham to wear heels and be taller than him on screen. Other actors aren't so relaxed: 'I even had a couple of day players [actors on set briefly] in Ted Lasso going, 'Is it all right if she doesn't wear shoes in this scene?' ' The heels stayed on.
Our food arrives. Waddingham looks at her kale-heavy superfood salad sadly. 'Good job we're not on a date. That's going to go right in my teeth,' she says. She is single but, while in a relationship in her late 30s, she decided that she wanted a child. She conceived naturally and, on her 40th birthday, took her baby daughter home from the hospital. Waddingham later separated from the father, Gianluca Cugnetto, an Italian hospitality businessman. She is now a single parent and doesn't name her 10-year-old publicly. 'Thank god she is the utter joy of my life because it is unyielding responsibility. I feel like more people should talk about how exhausting it is,' she says, chuckling. 'Not only physically showing up for them but being the best version of yourself, because they respond to actions far more than words.'
When it comes to romance, Waddingham is 'quite picky unless someone is sensational'. In her book, sensational means a kind, positive and upbeat man. 'I can't have people in my life whose default setting is glass half-empty. I just find it exhausting because I am absolutely the opposite,' she says.
We're politely sharing the fries when I accidentally put my foot in it: I ask if men find her intimidating. 'The whole intimidating thing is a very easy mantle to thrust upon me,' she says, irked. 'But if people bother to lean in, I'm not at all.' Why do you think that mantle has been thrust? 'I'm tall and front-footed and have strong opinions. But you would never call a man intimidating if he was those things.'
I move on to Waddingham calling out bad behaviour on set. She once overheard a sound guy saying something inappropriate to a colleague and challenged him to say it to the whole room on a microphone. 'If a man was standing up for people on set no one would put it in an interview,' she says. 'Society is brought up still to think that if a woman speaks her mind, if a woman pushes the needle, that she's intimidating, and men just don't get that.'
While posing on the red carpet at the Olivier awards last year, she chastised a photographer who had shouted at her to 'show a bit of leg'. 'Oh my god, you'd never say that to a man, my friend,' she told him. Now, Waddingham is fed up with that brief exchange being endlessly brought up by interviewers. 'I am completely silly, soft, vulnerable, sensitive, all the rest of it,' she says. 'Then when people behave badly, I call them out and that's it. But it's very easy to be defined by that.'
She stresses that she loves men and that plenty of them (Sudeikis, for example) have been her biggest champions. However, gendered language rankles her. 'A man just wears a suit, but a woman wears a power suit,' she says. 'You're not a female boss, you're a boss bitch. You wouldn't call a man a boss bastard.'
Waddingham grew up in south London, with her mother, Melodie Kelly, who was an opera singer in the English National Opera, her father, Harry, a marketing director and former model, and her older brother, who went into the police. Her maternal grandparents were also professional opera singers. Her mother was a 'grafter' who would often have rehearsals all day, nip home to cook supper and then head out for an evening's performance in the West End. 'That auditorium was like my childcare,' Waddingham says wistfully. 'I thought everyone's mum was an opera singer.' She died in December. 'The reason we get upset is because we love them,' Waddingham says, starting to cry. 'She gave me my voice and I hear her in my singing voice all the time.'
Waddingham went to a private girls' school, and has previously talked about being bullied for her height. When I raise the subject, however, she doesn't want to discuss it. 'I wouldn't want to give fuel to those people. I'm sure they're absolutely nowhere now.' As a statuesque 15-year-old, Waddingham was scouted by a modelling agency. After her parents let her start working at 16, the professionals told her to sign up with a plus-size agency. 'You turn up at a casting and there'd be the normal models at the time smoking, sitting, waiting to go in, and then all us plus-size models had a lovely time,' she says. 'We'd stand in there with milkshakes, a packet of crisps.'
The modelling gigs helped pay for drama school, which sounds like a mixed experience. One female drama instructor told 19-year-old Waddingham that she'd never work on screen because, in the teacher's words, it 'looks like one side of her face has had a stroke'. This bizarre cruelty had a lasting effect. 'She really knocked my confidence so much that I then didn't audition for things for years on telly,' she says. 'I hope she's rotting somewhere. Silly cow. People like that – it's their own insecurities and I know that now.'
Theatre work came quickly. For the first decade of her career, Waddingham was cast in stereotypical bombshell roles. 'Always 'a funny, busty blonde' or 'sexy, busty blonde',' she recalls. 'Change the front of it but 'busty blonde' will be at the end of it.'
Fast-forward to today. Her daughter is showing interest in the family business and has just starred in a school production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 'I need her to be aware that I really grafted for 22 years. Life is not being picked up by a black Mercedes,' she says.
Finding Mercedes-waiting-outside levels of success in her 40s rather than her 20s was a blessing. 'I probably would have found it incredibly overwhelming,' she says. 'Whereas I'm loving every single second of it now and know that I've earned it.'
She knows she should pause for breath but admits 'part of me is ravenous for the fun of it all'. She is presently based in Prague, along with her daughter and the nanny, to film Ride or Die, a Prime Video series in which she plays a glamorous assassin ('The most juicy, satisfying, exhausting role I've ever played') alongside Bill Nighy and Octavia Spencer. Ten days after that shoot finishes she will work on High in the Clouds, an animated musical film based on a children's book by Paul McCartney. Ringo Starr, Celine Dion, Lionel Richie and McCartney himself are in the cast. 'If I'm going to be in a room recording songs with Paul McCartney, I need to be rested,' she says, emphasising every letter of 'rested'. After that, season four of Ted Lasso kicks off.
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Throughout her career, Waddingham would rip up the scripts after she finished an audition. 'I'm a fatalist,' she explains. 'I believe that if something's coming for you, it will flow to you.' Is it true she has a mental list of the industry bigwigs who thwarted her progress? 'People at parties for years that would look round me. I'm just quietly never working with them. 'I remember you, motherf---er,' ' she says, flashing a wolfish grin.
Despite her recent successes and accolades, she insists that she still doesn't think of herself as famous: 'I've just become more known.' What are the upsides? 'Being afforded the luxury of the kind of roles that I always knew I could play and, as a single mum, the luxury of being able to put my daughter in great schools. It does give you freedom,' she says. 'I genuinely don't give a shit about fame. I never have. I never will.'