Art can imitate life, even in the most stressful of times.
Hannah Waddingham learned that while filming season two of Ted Lasso, as she grappled with her father undergoing a major surgery while filming a funeral scene for her on-screen dad. Pretty jarring, right?
Not for Hannah, who called the poignant episode, titled “No Weddings and a Funeral,” “the greatest gift” of her career. “Not many people know this, but my own father, that day, was having emergency quintuple bypass surgery,” Hannah, who plays AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton on the Apple TV+ series, exclusively told E! News. “And I had said goodbye to him that morning, not knowing whether I would ever see him again.”
As Hannah detailed, being with the Ted Lasso cast and crew got her through that day. “It’s something that I’ll never forget, the distraction that I had,” she added. “There was a certain amount of catharsis in being able to release on camera, because had I been shooting a day where she was meant to be sassy or bold or boss a– bitch or whatever, I would have probably struggled more.”