Hannah Waddingham’s ‘Home for Christmas’ is a love letter to her mom and ‘Ted Lasso’ viewers

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — “Ted Lasso” may have ended on Apple TV+, but one of its stars is keeping the good vibes going.

Hannah Waddingham, who played AFC Richmond team owner Rebecca Welton in “Ted Lasso,” talked to The Hollywood Reporter about how her new holiday special, “Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas,” came to be.

While plenty of viewers know her for Emmy-winning performance on the sitcom, the actress actually has decades of musical theater experience.

She told THR that the idea for her to do her own musical holiday show came about after she made an appearance on a Michael Bublé special. Her manager, Nick Todisco, suggested it, she said.

“Immediately, being typically English, I went, ‘Oh, no, no, no. Nobody’s interested in that,’” she said. “And he was like, ‘I don’t know. You’ve had such popularity with your singing in ‘Ted.’ Let’s just float it to Apple.’ And we put a pitch together.”

The result was an “old school” event that she likened to a “Dean Martin-Carol Burnett kind of special,” filmed in the London Coliseum, where her mother had performed as a singer. Waddingham said she remembered being 8 years old and watching her mother perform there. So it felt right, she said, to have her own 8-year-old daughter in the audience during the taping, as well as her mother, who now has mobility challenges due to having advanced Parkinson’s disease.

Waddingham also had some of her fellow “Ted Lasso” costars, including Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein and Jason Sudeikis, participate in the show.

“Apple was brilliant,” she said. “Whenever we had meetings, I stressed that, yes, you could sing with a load of famous people, but I have to have a connection to them because, otherwise, it’s not authentic to me.”

With so much “Ted Lasso” love in the special, it begs the question as to whether there will be a spinoff series since fans have been requesting one.

“Everyone keeps asking this, but no, there’s been no word of a spinoff at all, and I have made it quite clear that unless Ted was in it…,” Waddingham said. “I can’t imagine really a world where Rebecca exists without Ted because they are each other’s inspiration.”

“Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas” is currently streaming on Apple TV+.

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