Hannah Waddingham has revealed she keeps a list in her head of all the people who tried to block her rise up the showbusiness ladder, and enjoys telling them this.
Deadline previously reported that the Ted Lasso star had told a BBC podcast that a teacher insulted her appearance, saying one side of her face looked as though she’d had a stroke, but that she used the insult to galvanise her ambition, saying, “I thought, I will do. Come hell or high water, I will work on screen.”
Now, the UK’s The Sun newspaper reports that, in conversation for the podcast Sunday Sitdown With Willie Geist, Waddingham has added a few more names to her mental blacklist, including the school bullies who called the tall star “a lanky freak,” the boyfriends who told her she was inadequate, and the casting directors who said she wasn’t the right shape to appear in their projects.
“Yes, there is a little list of people who wouldn’t give me the time of day but now want to work together,” Waddingham revealed.
“And I am happy to say to them: ‘Please look somewhere else. I’m human. I remember. Bog off.’”
Waddingham, who was previously a musical theatre star, has shared her struggles to score significant screen roles. When she won an Emmy Award for her role in the gentle comedy Ted Lasso, she used her acceptance speech to urge producers to give theatre performers a break.
Waddingham recently appeared in The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, and will appear in Mission: Impossible 8 alongside Tom Cruise.