Hannah Waddingham can make a withheld response funny and a warm voice untrustworthy. We rate her most highly when she has time to show more than the authority that gets her cast.
Fi1m perspective
In Ted Lasso (2020), Hannah Waddingham makes a joke out of Rebecca Welton withholding a response. With Jason Sudeikis's Ted supplying so much cheerfulness, her reluctance to join in becomes welcome. She lets us register Rebecca's resistance without making each pause a demand for attention. It is a good performance in a warm, uneven comedy, and the supporting cast often provides the reason to keep watching. Alongside Brett Goldstein's blunt Roy Kent, she makes room for something other than Ted's optimism.
Her early screen work gave a musical-theatre lead a succession of much smaller opportunities. Septa Unella in Game of Thrones (2015–2016) made use of her capacity to intimidate. Rebecca was the breakthrough, with enough time to make warmth and vulnerability count too. We would rather watch that develop than have another entrance whose main purpose is to tell us who is in charge.
In David Leitch's The Fall Guy (2024), her producer Gail Meyer talks Ryan Gosling's Colt Seavers back onto a film set, using reassurance to get what she wants. We laughed at the way Waddingham lies in the same warm voice she uses for praise. The pleasure is in how little she needs to alter the delivery: Gail can sound helpful while giving us reason to distrust her. Leitch gives her a useful comic part, though the overcomplicated mystery around it grows tiresome.
Lilo & Stitch (2025) offers a smaller pleasure: her Grand Councilwoman has a headmistress's patience, conveyed through voice alone. It is an amusing choice in a remake short of jokes, and she is gone too soon. The limitation is how often films ask her to establish authority quickly and leave the rest to somebody else. She is effective at it, but those parts offer fewer chances for the delayed reactions that work so well in Ted Lasso. Start with Rebecca, and give the programme's uneven jokes a little patience.
Biography
Hannah Waddingham is an English actress, singer and television presenter. She was born on 28 July 1974 in Wandsworth, London.
She is known for playing Rebecca Welton in the series Ted Lasso (2020–), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2021. Her film roles include Gail Meyer in The Fall Guy (2024), Admiral Neely in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) and the voice of the Grand Councilwoman in Lilo & Stitch (2025).
Waddingham has appeared in West End productions including Spamalot, the 2010 Regent's Park revival of Into the Woods and The Wizard of Oz. She received three Olivier Award nominations for her stage work. Other television roles include Septa Unella in Game of Thrones (2015–2016) and Sofia Marchetti in Sex Education (2019–2023).
