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Straight-talking Hannah Waddingham knows how to respond to a photographer asking her to ‘show some leg’ but, here, she talks about her latest film The Fall Guy and being a single mum...
Since her Emmywinning role as straight-talking Rebecca in TV smash Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham’s become the woman of the moment.
Hosting the Olivier Awards just last week, she even knew exactly what to say to a photographer who asked her to ‘show some leg’ as she posed for photos in a long dress, saying: ‘You’d never say that to a man, my friend… don’t say that to me.’ She promptly stopped posing on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall and walked
off, visibly fuming. It’s more than two decades since Hannah’s blinkand-you’ll-miss-it early TV roles in Brookside and Footballers’ Wives. Here, the London-born mumof-one scales new heights – appearing alongside Tom Cruise in the next Mission: Impossible – but she’s counting her blessings and keeping her feet on the ground…
Hi Hannah. We’re soon to see you with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in The Fall Guy – looking very different…
I’m in deep, deep disguise. Dark wig, glasses… I basically look like Slash [from Guns N’ Roses] in it – which I love. I genuinely don’t care what I look like for a role. I’ve looked like I’ve been dug up so many times. I find it much more satisfying.
Straight after, you were off to join Tom Cruise to film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two…
How exciting is that? He’s very lovely. I do think he’s the last of our great movie stars. I don’t know how he finds enough hours in the day, because he’s constantly looking for the one pair of eyes that looks nervous of him and he will make a beeline for them and say, ‘Hi’.
You arrived with him to film on a boat with 4,500 servicemen and women…
They’d been at sea for seven months. He did a screening of Maverick, which we were there for – it was just insane. I stayed in the admiral’s quarters... and I was like, ‘Do you realise how ridiculous this is, that I’m playing this part? If this was happening in real life, this ship would have sunk by now.’
Seeing you at an awards ceremony with a cardboard handbag your nine-yearold daughter made, clearly she’s your greatest joy…
I was told I couldn’t have children. And I was, naturally, in shock – it’s not something you ever expect to hear. So I went down the kind of Eastern medicine route. And for me, thankfully, it worked. On my 40th birthday, I came out of hospital with her – after a few days of complications. I’ve been a single mother since she was two. As much as all of this is my dream come true –
