She has no shortage of tall actress tales.
Hannah Waddingham, whose resume includes “Game of Thrones” and “Sex Education,” became a household name with her Emmy-winning turn in the Apple TV+ hit “Ted Lasso.”
Viewers fell in love with Waddingham, 49, as the poised, yet hilarious football club owner Rebecca Welton.
But as Waddingham revealed on “The View” in June, she has often been overlooked for roles because of her 5’11” stature.
Waddingham described auditioning for projects she knew she’d never get because producers didn’t want her to tower over the male lead.
“Being a woman who’s not small — very tall — I had always struggled,” Waddingham told Whoopi Goldberg and the panel of “The View” on the June 15 episode.
“The amount of times they’d be like, ‘We’ve already cast a guy who’s 5’7″.’ Whereas when I went into [‘Ted Lasso’], Jason [Sudeikis] was like, ‘I don’t care if she wears 4-inch heels. Let’s do it.’”
Though it may seem like a low bar, when Sudeikis supported Waddingham, it made a material difference in her career.
“That is a completely unique situation to find yourself in,” she said, “where the man is so generous that they want to raise you up and celebrate everything that you are and not that you’re, like, some skinny-mini.”
“Ted Lasso” premiered in August 2020. Season 3 dropped in the spring.
“It was so nice when I first joined — I was 45 when we started shooting, which in itself is fabulous and unusual, [which is] ridiculous that it’s so unusual — the fact that [Sudeikis] was just like, ‘No, I don’t care that she’s taller than me,’” Waddingham said.
She continued, “They had the power of Sudeikis, so it meant they had the luxury of going, ‘Yeah, but who is just right for every single one of these parts?’”
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