Ted Lasso season 3 is set to start filming on the most romantic day of the year, Valentine’s Day 2022. Hannah Waddingham, who plays the fierce owner of AFC Richmond Rebecca, announced the start of filming during an appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden.
During Corden’s show, he asked if the third season of the hit TV series had started filming and what it was like on set. Waddingham admitted that the constant reworking of the scripts – sometimes up to the start of filming – can be a little tricky as an actor, especially when her character gives quite long emotional speeches.
“We start on Valentine’s Day,” she told Corden. “It’s rather lovely, but, because Jason’s from SNL and Brendon, who plays Coach Beard, is from Second City with him in Chicago, and because Brett does standup, they write the framework of the show, and me with lots of emotional monologues, I would suddenly get completely different words just before the camera is about to go on me.”
While Waddingham was initially a little put out by this slightly improvisational style, she quickly warmed to it, thanks in part to some encouragement from Jason Sudeikis.
“At first, I was like, ‘Dude, you can’t do this to me,’ and Jason was like, ‘You are absolutely fine.’ I think they liked doing it because you get the immediate knee-jerk reactions to something,” she said. “But, my mid-40’s brain can’t cope with it at all. I’m one stage away from having idiot boards. It’s hardcore, man, But they are just used to that sort of SNL kind of world.”
Clearly, there’s a method in Sudeikis’s madness. Waddingham has won both a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2021 for her portrayal of Rebecca.
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