Multiple award-winning Hannah Waddingham revealed how she was insulted by a drama teacher in the past, saying she would never succeed in TV because of how she looked.
The Ted Lasso star said: “I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class: ‘Oh Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke.”
She admitted to the BBC Radio 2 podcast Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakers that her previous drama teacher’s comment gave her “a complex for years.”
However, this comment only spurred her on to do better. “I thought, I will do. Come hell or high water, I will work on screen,” she said.
She shared how she would work hard and “literally take anything to get myself on screen.”
When she saw that she was not getting the TV roles she deserved despite all the hard work, she decided that she’d had enough.
“It got to the point where I realized I was only getting one scene in this, or one ep[isode] in that. And I went, do you know what? I think I’ve done enough. This isn’t cool anymore. Why should I be constantly feeding into someone else’s storyline?”
So, she told her agents that she would not be doing roles with only one scene as it was “insulting” for someone who has “been a leading lady for 22 years.”
“I’d rather be in a world where I’m appreciated,” she said.
When she took a full step back from minor scenes, she landed a role on Game of Thrones as Septa Unella (the Shame Nun) in season five, making it her first major screen role.
When Visage asked her what advice she could give to the listeners who have ambitions, she said: “Chance it. Put your foot down and be brave. And if it doesn’t work, truly live in where you find yourself and embrace it. But you have to try.”
Waddingham has won multiple awards, including an Emmy, a Critics’ Choice Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for playing Rebecca Welton in AppleTV+ comedy Ted Lasso. She also has been in Game of Thrones and Sex Education and co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest last year.
