As one of the multitude of Ted Lasso alums sporting Emmy nominations for the Apple TV+ series and much-needed international restorative, Hannah Waddingham had plenty to smile about on Wednesday’s Late Night With Seth Meyers. Toting a big glass of white wine from her remote and comfy living room, Waddingham told Meyers that she’s just glad that so many of her fellow cast members and other creative types on the show got nominated for awards as well, since, as “great pals,” there would be “some awks,” if anyone got left out. Thankfully, the Emmy voters were just as enthralled as the rest of us, with nearly all of the main cast—including Jason Sudeikis, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Jeremy Swift, and Nick Mohammed—all being recognized. (We’d say Phil Dunster’s prima donna striker Jamie Tartt got robbed, but complaining over Ted Lasso only receiving 20 Emmy nominations for its stellar first season feels like poor sportsmanship.)
For Waddingham, the role of team owner and onetime antagonist (since forgiven) Rebecca Welton is just her latest performing triumph, although she told Meyers that it might be her most consistently enjoyable. Explaining that journalists (perhaps taking a cue from Trent Crimm—The Independent) are always attempting to ferret out some un-Richmond FC-like dissension amongst the cast, Waddingham assured Meyers that things around the set are essentially as chummy and positive as they are in Coach Lasso’s locker room. “We’re a bit nauseatingly in love with each other,” is how Waddingham phrased it. And, as fun as that sounds, things get even more adorable, in that all of the rough and tumble football (of both varieties) types around Waddingham are also huge fanboys of her other, perhaps more famous career on the West End and Broadway musical theater stage.
“Brett Goldstein was fangirling like a bitch,” Waddingham tattled about her first meeting with Richmond’s perpetually snarling, macho Roy Kent, in a revelation that only makes us love Roy even more than his barely glimpsed, uncharacteristically emotional retirement speech did. Tossing Sudeikis, and Hunt into the category of “West End Wendys,” Waddingham speculated that it was the mostly-male cast’s worshipful appreciation of her turn in Into The Woods that really got her the job as their effortfully stoic onscreen boss. (It certainly wasn’t her football acumen, of which Waddingham confessed she has even less than Coach Ted Lasso.) Even Meyers got into the stage-door Johnny spirit, telling Waddingham that he himself fangirled out upon seeing the multitalented actress in a Broadway production of Spamalot. In turn, Waddingham revealed that she, apprised of Meyers’ presence in the 2008 audience, had been harboring a “gentle crush” since, something Meyers made damn sure his production team wasn’t going to edit out of the interview.
And, although a little mutual infatuation is nothing to be ashamed of, Meyers did remind/reveal to everybody that TV viewers were perhaps most familiar with Waddingham as Game Of Thrones’ Septa Unella. (The censorious, wimpled holy woman who rings the bell as Cersei makes her naked walk of penitence through King’s Landing.) Explaining that she’s quite tickled to be the ubiquitous face of that “Shame! Shame! Shame!” meme, Waddingham told Meyers that, despite her costume making her look “like Jar Jar Binks,” she’s happy to have been one of the Westerosi. She’s didn’t mention how she felt about that whole waterboarding comeuppance scene, but did ask that male fans stop sending her their homemade Halloween Septa Unella costume pics, as they are, predictably, pretty inappropriately embellished. Red card on that nonsense. Pretty sure we’re using that correctly.
