It was in 2023 that everything changed for Hannah Waddingham. As sleeper hit Ted Lasso – her breakout role – grew increasingly popular, the then-49-year-old not only presided over the Laurence Olivier Awards and bagged her own Christmas TV special (filmed at the same London Coliseum venue she used to watch her English National Opera singer mother perform), but she landed one of the biggest presenting gigs imaginable: Eurovision.
Her Eurovision performance was huge. Live in Liverpool, Waddingham outshone everyone – even Finland’s bolero-jacketed cha-cha-chaing Käärijä – as co-presenter of that rare contest that made me proud to be British. “You see, Europe, some of us do bother to learn another language,” she said after a burst of fluent French had the entire arena chanting her name.
Waddingham wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with such adulation. During her musical theatre beginnings, she was regularly singled out for praise: Andrew Lloyd Webber personally selected her for The Beautiful Game, another football-themed affair, after reading a scathing play review where she was pinpointed as its sole redeeming feature. Ironically, then, she might have that scathing review to thank for setting her on the path to stardom. After The Beautiful Game, she went on to pick up three Olivier nods for Spamalot, A Little Night Music and Kiss Me Kate.
