‘Ted Lasso’ Emmy Winner Hannah Waddingham Is Starring In Her Own Super Bowl Ad For Rakuten

She has already won over the hearts of audiences with her Emmy-winning performance as tough boss with a soft side Rebecca Welton on the hit series Ted Lasso, but this weekend during the Super Bowl, actress Hannah Waddingham is embracing her humorous dark side in the new Rakuten commercial.

“Rakuten had a very specific brief of wanting a ball-busting Bond villain-type who didn’t take themself too seriously and they were like Ted Lasso’s Rebecca Welton,” Waddingham tells me with a laugh at Forbes. “So, they approached me and the thing that was lovely is that I know this was their first commercial, so it was less intimidating for me. It was my first commercial for the Super Bowl, so it feels like we held hands and I hope that we produced something that people will think is really fun but shows exactly what Rakuten does.”

Founded in 1997, Rakuten strives to save its members money with the simple business model of stores paying Rakuten a commission for sending its members to shop at their websites. Rakuten then splits that commission with purchasing members, in the form of cash back. Waddingham’s Super Bowl commercial effectively demonstrates that method in one playfully hilarious scenario that feels more like a fun mockery of a lavish spy movie scene than just a commercial.

“I loved the fact that I turn up on-set – we’re at the amazing Hatfield House in North London and everything was absolutely just done to the nth degree to make it like a mini-film. I love getting involved with people that actually go the extra mile.”

Waddingham goes on to tell me that she is having a difficult time wrapping her head around the amount of eyeballs all over the world that will be watching her Rakuten commercial come Sunday during the big game. She says she hopes to watch her Super Bowl ad debut in real time, if possible, and reveals that she will be rooting for what she calls the underdogs, the Cincinnati Bengals over the Los Angeles Rams.

Waddingham is no stranger to that feeling of newfound victory after taking home the Emmy last September for her outstanding performance on Ted Lasso. These five months since that special awards night, I wondered what has been her biggest takeaway from that thrilling recognition.

“I think it was the fact that a woman in her mid-/approaching late forties could be exposed as a talent as much as anybody else,” Waddingham continues. “And I feel like the later that it has happened in my career is perhaps when the universe meant for it to happen. I love the fact that we are in a world now where age doesn’t seem to matter and that you can still be glamorous, you can still be funny, you can still be relevant. I feel like the [Ted Lasso] show had already put me on the map, but the Emmys did it even further. If it means that it kind of opens the doors to meet guys like these Rakuten guys and be on this platform at the Super Bowl, which is just insane. It’s something I never dreamed of in my twenties or my thirties. For it to happen to me in my forties is just magical.”

I could not but help but ask Waddingham next – Where is your Emmy today? “Well originally, it was in my daughter’s room. She’s seven and I wanted her to have it in her room to show her that mommy only ever goes away when it’s really for something important, but then I had fear that you know that spiky wing bits out the back? I thought Oh my god, I’m just going to be in the newspaper: ‘Child impaled by Emmy.’ So, I took it out and it’s now on my sideboard but my daughter has put her little dance trophy next to it, so we now have a little trophy area.

It was recently announced that filming for season 3 of Ted Lasso will begin very soon, as loyal fans of the AppleTV+ series eagerly want to know what happens next for AFC Richmond football (better known as soccer to Americans) and the many beloved characters that help lead the fictional club.

When speaking about her hopes for her evolving character of Rebecca, Waddingham says, “I feel like the first season we explored her insecurities and the lack of love for the team, which she then grew to love. Season two, we look at her more as someone that’s emerging and she’s on the dating apps and stuff. Season three, I hope that she will get back to being the boss, you know the boss ass bitch of the team and be running the team in a different way because she truly loves the team. I’m hoping that’s the direction we’ll go.”

Beyond Ted Lasso and her Rakuten Super Bowl commercial, Waddingham also recently wrapped her filming on Hocus Pocus 2, a sequel to the 1993 Halloween classic that is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ this fall. Though she was very tight-lipped about sharing any details about her new character, she did happily disclose one moment on-set that she will not soon forget.

“I actually got to hang out with Bette [Midler] and with Kathy [Najimy] and Sarah [Jessica Parker] and honestly, when I go to my grave, I will go Do you know what? I sat and had lunch with the three witches from Hocus Pocus.”

Before Waddingham became Septa Unella with her unforgettable bell-ringing “Shame” scene on Game of Thrones (she tells me that she kept the bell and jokes that it is her prized possession in her home), she began her acting career on-stage all across London, including in the popular West End theatre district. Following the last couple years of the Covid-19 pandemic and the disruptive closures that her theatre community has had to endure, Waddingham expresses her support for her fellow performers affected, both creatively and financially, by this lingering pandemic.

“The job is the producers to find ways to make it work and I think the biggest thing is for them to put people on furloughs. I don’t know whether people know, but theatre people weren’t furloughed. They were the first people out and practically the last people back into work. People in theatre, not just West End but all over the globe really, musical theatre people are the hardest working people in terms of the entertainment industry. They don’t do it for fame, they don’t do it for money, the least you can do is maintain their job for them so they have something to come back to and they’re not re-auditioning for the same part. If people are going to want to go back to live performances, which everyone is chomping at the bit to do, I think producers need to make sure that those people are being looked after.”

Waddingham makes it very clear that getting these great television parts and other opportunities were no overnight success. She shares with me that casting directors would often “poo poo” on the fact that her acting background was in theatre when she first began auditioning for on-screen roles. So, I concluded my conversation with Waddingham by asking her what she would say or do differently earlier in her career, after everything that she has experienced, learned, and achieved up to now.

“When they [the casting directors] say Oh, you’ve done theatre? Go yes and it’s the greatest medium in the world and celebrate that fact that you were in it because those doors have to swing open. I felt like I was knocking on the door for an awfully long time before I swung it off its hinges and it just takes casting directors & directors to look within that field because there are brilliant, brilliant performers who you will never see because they are not given the chance. I’m desperate for my musical theatre friends to come with me through that door because they deserve to be there just as much, if not more than me.”