“Are you trying to make me look dolly?”
That’s the question Hannah Waddingham posed to her stunt director on “Ride or Die,” her new buddy comedy/action series with Octavia Spencer.
They play friends of 20 years. Waddingham just happens to be a notorious assassin known as Whip Tail.
“When I’m in the mud fighting with my dukes up, the last thing I want to look like is some glamour girl. I want to look like I was dug up from the grave!” says the British actress, who also returns in August in the new season of “Ted Lasso.”
Waddingham smiles when explaining how she became an action star at age 51 with “Ride or Die.”
“I hate to use these words, but I am a woman of a certain age, which was why it was so important to me to do most of my own stunts,” says Waddingham, who even jumps off a moving train in the new Prime Video series. “At the same time, I asked myself, ‘Do you remember you’re 51? What are you doing?’
“It was the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done!” she adds.
In “Ride or Die,” Spencer’s Debbie has always thought her best friend for life, Judith (Waddingham), was a forensic accountant. Then a hit goes astray, Debbie learns her pal is really the most notorious assassin of her generation, and they’re forced to go on the run, targeted by a mysterious foe.
When she’s not on set, Waddingham, a single mother of 12-year-old Kitty, lives in London. Her good life tips:
Special bond
“Ride or Die” focuses on midlife female friendship. Waddingham says those relationships are key. “Our friendship bubbles up all the way through the episodes,” she says. “These women love each other, but like any other great female friendship, you don’t have to wait. They will call each other out. … Octavia was the highlight of this for me. She always had my back and vice versa. … Women have a great way of being in each other’s corners.”
Age doesn’t matter
“Her agency wants to retire her because she is a female assassin of a certain age,” Waddingham says of her new role. “She has been working since she was 15, and there is nothing indicating she needs to stop. Would they make a male assassin stop because he had another birthday? … She proves that she is able and age doesn’t matter. What better time than being a woman in your 50s showing you can spin all these plates at the same time — we’ve been doing that for years.”
Ready for action
Sure, she found herself “completely mangled and bruised,” but Waddingham reveled in bathroom fight scenes and motorcycle chases. She even throws some punches in a long, gold dress. “I loved it. It was exciting and scary at the same time,” says Waddingham, who adds that she trained two or three days a week. “So different from my regular life of sitting, eating and watching TV!”
No major plan
Waddingham was raised in south London, where her mother was a mezzo soprano in the prestigious English National Opera. “I’ve always been a bit of a vocal mimic,” the actress says. “I was able to sing in different styles. I just didn’t have a major plan. It was just a foregone conclusion I would be in the arts.”
Dinner theater work led to casting on the West End and later Broadway, where she starred in “Spamalot.” TV roles followed with a break on “Game of Thrones,” whose showrunners insisted to “Ted Lasso’s” producers that she get a shot at the role of Rebecca.
Getting the call
“One day, I got the pilot for a show called ‘Ted Lasso,’” Waddingham says. “You could see parts of the script, but not other parts. That afforded me the luxury of asking: ‘Who is this woman at face value?’”
She went in for an audition and remembers, “I left the best in that room, came out and waited like we all do. Then I went back to my regular life of school pickup. … I found out right before school pickup. I had to walk through the playground without yelling on the top of my lungs, ‘Oh, my God! I got it!’”
Ted forever
“They’re teaching ‘believe’ at American universities,” she marvels. How about the new season? “It’s just brilliant,” she teases. “It’s magnificent. All of it!”
Embrace the now
“Getting older means you really know yourself. It’s really lovely,” she says. “You can honestly say, ‘You’re all right, girl. You got this!’”
