Ted Lasso got quite a bit of love when the 2022 Emmy nominations were announced: 20 nominations! Those include: Outstanding Comedy Series, Lead Actor, three Supporting Actor, three Supporting Actress, two Guest Actor, and Guest Actress. Among them is Hannah Waddingham, for Supporting Actress, which she won in 2021.
Here, Waddingham reacts to the nominations and teases what’s ahead in Season 3.
Congratulations!
Hannah Waddingham: Thank you so much. It’s an absolutely banger of an evening.
Your acting nomination, 20 total nominations – they’re so well-deserved.
Thank you. We’re all very emotional tonight. It’s just amazing for us to be in the middle of shooting Season 3 and have this smack us around the face in the middle of it is just unbelievable.
Talk about getting the news.
I was sitting by myself in a coffee shop having an iced coffee and hadn’t realized what the time was and I get a voice call from my manager. I was just like, “Hello, darling.” Just like literally, as we do, talking about what we need to get done and whatever, and I genuinely had lost track of what time it was because of course we’re in a different time zone. So he then just squealed down the phone and I was like, oh, I know what that noise means. I asked immediately who else had been nominated. Of course it’s rightly so and I’m thrilled that Juno [Temple] and Brett [Goldstein] and Jason [Sudeikis] are nominated again, but to have Sarah Niles and Dame Harriet Walter, and my beloved Toheeb Jimoh and Jimmy Lance in the mix, honestly, we are a very, very, very happy bunch of Greyhounds.
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I love the love Ted Lasso keeps getting, from fans and also from award shows.
It’s just gorgeous. The universal love that is being thrown our way, I genuinely find it quite humbling. It’s unbelievable.
What stood out about Rebecca’s arc from this season for you?
I like the fact that she’s still very wobbly and lost. She’s allowing herself to entertain the idea of a younger man, even though when she pulls the plug on it, you can see that she’s still not sure about it, but she feels like it’s the right thing to do because of who she’s become, because of who she was, because of who she’s trying to get away from. I love all of that and to get the chance to play out that funeral episode I think will always be one of the highlights of my career.
That’s why Ted Lasso is so good — the comedy’s great, and so are the emotional, heartfelt moments.
Yeah, absolutely. But that’s just due to the writers room knowing when to sock it to you and when to give you some light relief. It’s an absolute magical art form from that room.
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Has anything about Season 2 jumped out at you since the nominations were announced you hadn’t necessarily thought stood out before?
No, not really. Because as we were shooting it, I could feel it. I even said to Toheeb when we were shooting our stuff together, I was like, you’re gonna get nominated for this, dude. And he was like, oh, shut up. And I went, no, you wait, you are gonna be embarrassed because I’m gonna be right. [Laughs] And I knew that something would come James Lance’s way, because in the very first sentence, when he first opened his mouth as Trent Crimm in the very first time we see him, I was like, “oh, the presence coming off this man.” And the same as Sarah Niles. They walk in and they own their moments and that’s why, of course, Jason hasn’t been able to put them down.
And same with you. You enter a scene and immediately own it.
I don’t feel that. I feel like I’m constantly, not only fangirling in every scene I do with these guys, but also I think, oh God, are people bored of Rebecca yet? I love her deeply. And I feel like I’m walking along with the friends that I need to serve properly, but I’ve always worried that she’s not the funny one or whatever, but all I can do play her truth and go along for the ride with her.
What can you tease about Rebecca in Season 3?
I’m glad that she’s not completely sorted. She doesn’t still entirely know what she’s doing in her private life, but she is 100 percent the leader of that football team and proud to be.
Speaking of her private life, what’s going on with Rebecca and Sam?
I don’t know, you’ll have to see. [Laughs]
How’s she feeling about that heading into Season 3?
I don’t know, you’ll have to see. [Laughs]
With Season 3 being written as the end, what can you share about the season in general?
That we are revving up to absolutely sock it to everyone.
Ted Lasso, Season 3, TBA, Apple TV+