Hannah Waddingham’s ‘Home For Christmas’ Celebrates The Season With Friends And Family

While most people know Hannah Waddingham from her role on Ted Lasso as football club owner Rebecca Welton, she’s also a veteran live theater actress, hainvg spent 22 years trodding the boards.

She describes her return to the stage in her new Holiday special, Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas, as dream come true.

Joining the Emmy Award-winner and three-time Olivier Award nominee is an 18-piece band, the Fabulous Lounge Swingers, along with Sam Ryder, Luke Evans, Leslie Odom Jr, Phil Dunster, and — surprise! — a few of her fellow Ted Lasso co-stars.

Her TV fans have already been introduced to Waddingham’s singing abilities via a Christmas installment of Ted Lasso along with an episode that finds her belting out tunes during a Karaoke session.

She says that initially she was confused about incorporating her musical ability into the series, as she asked series creator and star Jason Sudeikis, “Why would a football club owner sing, and he was like, ‘because you’re going to sing, we’re not going to not have you singing.’”

Waddingham says that in pitching the tone of special, she told executives that it would be, ‘somewhere between Dean Martin and Carol Burnett [shows],’ describing it as, “that style of having people over for the holidays, dropping in in their finery. I mean, I feel like it’s a bygone era with people in beautiful dinner jackets and beautiful dresses, so I was keen for the band to be in their tuxes and my backing vocalists to feel a million dollars.”

In creating the special, Waddingham says that she, ‘put pressure’ on herself to showcase her range.

“I wanted to find songs where I could do what I like doing with songs and pick songs that are very famous, but to reinvent them in my own way.”

Those numbers include Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, That’s What Christmas Means to Me, and O Holy Night, among others.

The venue of the special, The London Coliseum, holds particular significance for Waddingham as she explains, “It had to be where it all started for me which was sitting as a little girl in the theater watching the English National Opera with my mom singing on that stage as a soprano. It was a no brainer.”

Having both her mother, Melodie Kelly who performed as a singer for 30 years, and her daughter in attendance provided a magical moment for Waddingham, she explains.

“Singing O Holy Night, to my mum and to my daughter, the unbelievable timing of the fact that my daughter was eight when we shot this and she was sitting in the box where I sat from the age of eight, observing with her little spirit and her little heart, seeing her mummy standing there when I had sat there and [watched] my mummy, [was special].”

She quickly adds, “To have my mum there at all when I didn’t even know she was going to make it. She’s heavily inflicted with Parkinson’s disease and it was a big deal for me to get her there in her wheelchair, and my father who had gone through quintuple heart surgery while I was shooting the third season of Ted Lasso; to have them both there and to have my daughter there too was just…. if I never did anything again, this special would be my greatest achievement.”

Waddingham’s wish now is for viewers to watch and take away a feeling of ‘joy and positivity.’

“We’re in such a mess of unkindness and selfishness at the moment, and I know that there are far more important things in the world on a global scale,” says Waddingham, “but everyone needs distraction, everyone needs to smile, everyone needs to shed a tear when they need to, and if I can provide a little happiness then I hope that’s what this is.”

‘Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas’ is available for streaming Wednesday, November 22nd on Apple TV+