Emmy FYC: Hannah Waddingham in "Ted Lasso"
Monday, May 24, 2021 at 4:35PM Our team is breaking down the top contenders and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks.
By Ben Miller
There’s a reason Ted Lasso has endured through all these months. When the world shut down and every piece of news was about the worst possible people doing the worst possible things, we needed a bit of positivity in our lives. Enter the world’s sunniest dispositioned football/futbol coach in Jason Sudekis’ Ted Lasso.
As much as the shenanigans of Ted and his team entertain, the central conflict of the show’s freshman season is between Lasso and Richmond FC owner Rebecca Welton, played to sly, annoyed perfection by Hannah Waddingham...
For all intents and purposes, Rebecca is the villain as the show begins. She has inherited the club ownership after divorcing her philandering husband and she intends to run the club into the ground just to spite him. The crux of her plan involves hiring Ted and with the expectation he will fail spectacularly. Slowly but surely, Ted endears himself to Rebecca (and everyone else) with his suffocating sweetness.
Most interactions with Ted end up the same: Rebecca starts annoyed and ends up enamored. The new coach gifts his boss with English biscuits and though she curtly refuses at first, his persistence eventually pushes her over the edge and she indulges (and eventually devours) the batch. Every subsequent morning, Rebecca practically snatches at the box to get at the morsels inside. Waddingham deftly embodies the physical comedy at every turn. She begins tightly and outwardly aggressive, until she eventually lurches at the box, brings it to her nose and sniffs it like a line of cocaine. She does all of this with the perfect blend of camp, tucked neatly inside her refined persona.
As the season progresses, Ted helps Rebecca at every turn in personal and professional ways. All the while, Rebecca stands steadfast in her desire to destroy the team. Waddingham wears this dichotomy with a shiny exterior, but behind closed doors is being torn apart by her desires and her newfound friends. Rebecca can never decide how far she wants to go; simultaneously trading away their best player and helping Ted through a panic attack.
Rebecca does eventually confess everything to Ted, breaking down every terrible thing she did in her attempts to undermine him. She lays it all out on the table and has an expectation for his reaction, just like she did when she hired him. Instead, Ted immediately forgives her and moves on. He offers a handshake as a peace offering, but for the first time, Rebecca is the one who gets too close and gives him a bear hug. Waddingham underplays the entire scene, laying everything out clearly and concisely while attempting to maintain her dignity.
Waddingham’s performance is the perfect supporting performance not because of how she supports Ted, but how her performance compliments the lead. The hero's positivity turns the “villain” into a fully-formed sympathetic character with clear motivations.
Before Ted Lasso, Waddingham was best known for parading Cersei Lannister nakedly through the streets of King’s Landing on Game of Thrones (NSFW). She is also an accomplished singer, as evidenced by her karaoke rendition of “Let it Go” in episode 6, but you can also watch her belt out “Memory” from Cats on stage in Barcelona.
Hopefully we can see more of Waddingham on our screens, but let’s get her to the Emmy stage beforehand.
more on the upcoming Emmys
- COMEDY
- Actress Comedy
- Actor Comedy
- Supporting Actress, Comedy
- Supporting Actor, Comedy
- DRAMA
- Actress Drama
- Actor Drama
- Supporting Actress, Drama
- Supporting Actor, Drama
- MORE...
- Emmy Ballots
- FYC The Handmaid's Tale
- FYC Marielle Heller, Queen's Gambit
- FYC Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso
- FYC I May Destroy You
- FYC For All Mankind
Best Supporting Actress, Emmys, FYC, Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso
Reader Comments (12)
Agreed! Great take. I hope she and Juno Temple both get nominated for enhancing an already excellent show.
Between Brendan Hunt, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein and Nick Mohammed, you could almost fill all the Supporting Actor slots (and Anthony Head should get a nod for Guest Actor).
@Working stiff
I was *this close* to writing about Brendan Hunt
While I appreciate this post and the due to Hannah Waddingham who I think thoroughly deserves an Emmy this fall, I will say I never saw Rebecca as a villain even when she was doing not great things. I think the element, for me, missing in your above report is that this is a woman coming out of a long term abusive relationship- verbal/emotional abuse, but abuse none the less. So I think in that sense it's more than just revenge against a philandering husband. It's a woman who has essentially nobody on her side in her life prior to the entrance of Ted and Keeley, as likely as with her friend Sassy, those prior relationships were done away with while with Rupert, and who is utterly just floundering and lashing out in any way she can. To me one of the best parts of the Ted and Rebecca dynamic and also why Ted forgave her so quickly is he's one of the only people around Rebecca (besides again Keeley) who sees through Rupert and has at least an iota of a sense of what she has been through. All this to say I agree with you re: the Emmys but don't necessarily agree that Rebecca was ever villain.
I agree she is great and makes the show tick. Her discovering the biscuits should be the Emmy clip.
She also has a small role in Bad Education.
I love her. Probably the BEST part in a very good show which is super high praise.
The nomination seems assured but not so fast on “getting her to the Emmy stage.” I’m holding back till Friday when Netflix releases the third season of The Kominsky Method. I want to binge the work of the great Kathleen Turner before I go all in on Waddingham.
Hear, hear! Waddingham is fabulous. I do wonder what they'll do with her character in season 2 now that she's 100% team Ted. I really hope they keep the relationship close but platonic.
Waddingham 8s also a fantastic musicals star. I've seen her as the witch in Into the woods, and a Little Night Music (the production that transferred to Broadway with CZJ), and she was hilarious as the original west end Lady of the Lake in Spamalot. Would love to see her singing on the big screen
That clip totally made me tear up and cry! Such a beautiful scene :)
Kathleen Turner is given some serious Emmy bait in the final season of The Kominsky Method. The race between her and Waddingham should be a nail biter.
She's brilliant but surely she should be considered in Leading Actress? She certainly has the greatest character arc in season one.
That leaves a Supporting Actress slot open for Juno Temple.