Her stellar performance in Ted Lasso propelled Hannah Waddingham to stardom, leading to glittering awards and offers to appear alongside the biggest names in Hollywood.
She’s soon to star with Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy and with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part Two and hosted the Olivier Awards – going viral after calling out a photographer for asking her to “show a bit of leg”.
Yet actress Hannah insists she doesn’t care about the fame or the money status brings.
After years of having “buckets of imposter syndrome” dumped on her, the greatest satisfaction comes from finally earning the acceptance she was “desperate” for, she admits.
Hannah, 49, says: “I’m a big believer in manifestation and I did say, ‘Look, I think I’ve been knocking about for a while now – can I please have something that will show everything that I feel like I’m capable of?’
“And then being able to have the chance to not have to show everything very quickly, like within a scene or within an episode or whatever… that’s the bit that I found most satisfying.
“Not fame, not money. But the actual thing of being taken seriously on screen has been the thing that I was just desperate for.”
Hannah made her stage debut in 1998 and performed in the West End for more than a decade as the Lady of the Lake in Spamalot and as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
After TV roles in Doctors, My Family and Benidorm, she landed Septa Unella in the smash hit series Game of Thrones.
She says: “I’d spoken to my agent a while before and said, ‘I feel like I’ve earned my stripes. I don’t want to be constantly feeding into other people’s storylines all the time. I’ve had enough of that.’
“And it’s nothing to do with fame or money – you don’t start in theatre for fame or money. It’s to do with knowing your worth. There’s that line between arrogance and knowing your worth.
“And I had found my worth and thought, ‘No, I can bloody do this, thank you very much. Just give me a chance.’
“Coming from theatre onto screen, you are constantly – like a bucket over you – imposter syndrome. Like, ‘sploosh’, all the time… drenched. And you have to poof yourself up again, with a hairdryer.”
Her performance as football team owner Rebecca in Apple TV+ comedy-drama Ted Lasso won her an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress.
But the down-to-earth star says: “I am never going to be chilled about that. And you know why?
“Because I know so many brilliant actors on screen or in theatre that, trust me – and I’m not saying it to be humble – definitely deserved it more. So it’s never lost on me, the privilege and the status and the recognition. I don’t take any of it for granted, because it can easily go to somebody else, and there’s far too many of us at it. So if you take it all for granted, then I’m sorry, you’ve turned into an a***hole!”
Born in Wandsworth, South West London, Hannah – who co-hosted the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest – grew up surrounded by singers. Her mum was a principal at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden and she can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to perform.
“It’s just in me and it’s a vocation,” she says. “I would have been a bit screwed if I’d had to do something else. I just wouldn’t have been any good at it. Although one of my earliest recollections is my mum standing me outside the bathroom door, my dad in the bathroom, and she said, ‘Tell Daddy what you want to be when you grow up’. And I went, ‘I want to be a lady who takes her clothes off!’ Which I kind of am.”
Ten years ago, Hannah had just starred in a stage revival of Kiss Me, Kate when she decided to audition for Game of Thrones, despite being “pregnant from the eyelashes down”, and was soon flung into intense filming in Dubrovnik, Croatia, with a nine-month-old baby – daughter Kitty, now nine.
And while Hannah admits it was a tough juggling act, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
She says: “I was told I couldn’t have children. And so I went down the kind of Eastern medicine route [with her hotelier ex, Gianluca Cugnetto].
“And for me, thankfully, it worked. On my 40th birthday, I came out of hospital with her. And I’ve been a single mother since she was two.
“And as much as all of this is my absolute dream come true, if I didn’t have her, I would be a little husk in the corner. That little girl… she’s my best little friend and she is my moral compass. Every single job, even when I’m exhausted from being a single parent, she is my zero. So I go off on a bungee rope and she is the root in my life. I do believe that she was sent to me and will always be my greatest companion.”
The Emmy – which Hannah refers to as “she” – originally lived in Kitty’s room.
“I did want her to see that I don’t just naff off for no reason,” the star says. “But I realised that [Kitty] could probably have her eye out with the wings, because she was only seven at the time. So now it sits in front of my hob in the kitchen. She’s very good for propping up things like recipes and to-do lists. She’s an active lady.”