Hannah Waddingham on How Ted Lasso Season 4 Motivated Rebecca to Become a Better Feminist

When a woman’s football club became the focus of Ted Lasso Season 4, no one was expected to thrive more than AFC Richmond’s owner, Rebecca Welton. After all, she spent years advocating for her place in a male-dominated sports industry.

Recently, I had the opportunity to ask Hannah Waddingham, who plays Rebecca, what she thought about the conflict this season that witnessed the iconic businesswoman struggle to make space for other women in her clubhouse.

“I loved it,” she professed. “I love the fact that the writers have sat in that room and gone, ‘What if we didn’t just make it easy for Rebecca? What if we didn’t just presume that this strong woman who has found her feet finally — what if we make her question whether she really is a feminist or not?'”

For Waddingham, it was important for Rebecca to acknowledge that identifying yourself as a feminist is the beginning of the work.

“Because I think us as women, we need to do that anyway. We need to question whether we’re doing enough, whether we’re standing with our fellow women,” Waddingham explained. “It’s not enough to just say I’m a woman, therefore I’m a feminist, which is what Rebecca has clearly perennially done.”

“So I would love to have been in that writers’ room where somebody said, ‘No, let’s make her question herself for a long while.’ And I love the fact that there is the serious question of that. It will make, hopefully, women question whether they are a feminist or not, whether they’re standing together, whether they understand everything that goes into trying to gain parity.”

Watch Hannah Waddingham discuss Ted Lasso Season 4:

“I absolutely love that. And then you see the humor of it, where Rebecca, for the first time ever, is intimidated by someone and stands with her face up against a wall. I love how we’ve weaved the drama and the comedy of her questioning herself.”

For Waddingham, playing Rebecca for four seasons on the hit comedy series has been a rollercoaster of exciting new challenges.

“I think as an actor and being trusted with Rebecca as a character, that has impacted me greatly. Because bear in mind, I came from musical theater. I had obviously done television before,” Waddingham recalled.

“I remember the first scene that I did, I didn’t know anything about Rupert coming in. I didn’t know anything about her infertility, her fertility issues. I didn’t know anything about any of that when I signed up for this show.”

However, one of her very first scenes playing Rebecca taught the actress to trust her instincts, and the rest, as they say, was history.

“When I sat there and was trusted by Bill Lawrence, Jason [Sudeikis], Apple, and Warner Brothers to deliver that speech of firing the old manager, I questioned whether I had what they needed in my tank to play this role.”

“And I look back at that scene now, and I think, ‘You had it, kid.’ No one had just tapped into it. And that’s what I’ll always remember, that Ted Lasso gave me the confidence to see what I could bring to the screen.”

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Ted Lasso Seasons 1-4 are available to stream on Apple TV+.

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