‘An overnight success after 25 years? Delicious’: Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham on sexism, stunts and stardom at 51

The actor seemed destined for a long but unflashy career in musical theatre – until a role as a football club owner in the TV hit changed everything. She talks about her new Hollywood era, calling out misogyny and why she’s ‘more than just camp’ Hannah Waddingham clears her throat. Her voice is a little scratchy. Two days before we meet, the star of Ted Lasso hosted the TV comedy show Saturday Night Live UK. She took part in almost all of the sketches that night, from a skit about “two top-heavy, Reading-based drama teachers” called Janet, to a musical number about how many glasses of wine to drink at a bar, to a bit in which she played the stern northern leader of a speed awareness course. In her opening monologue, she zipped through a variety of accents and impressions. “You see?” she told the cheering crowd. “Range! Range. ” I should have remembered this line when making small talk. We are tucked away in the hidden private dining room of a hotel in London, the city where the actor w...

Who was Muriel Box, Britain’s most prolific female film director?

She was also the first woman to win an Oscar for best original screenplay. Now a new radio documentary aims to give her pioneering work a fresh appraisal

In 1991, as a film student, I was offered £50 by a German women’s collective to shoot Muriel Box. But when the documentary director and I arrived at her home we were told that she was too ill to see us. She died a few months later aged 85. While I regret never meeting her, I’m also relieved. How terrible to have shown even a glimpse of my full ignorance of her achievements, a pioneering film-maker who had fought her way through an industry hostile to women to make a major contribution to cinema.

Box directed 13 feature films in the 1950s and early 60s and remains Britain’s most prolific female director. Her titles, made for a mainstream audience, include The Passionate Stranger, an imaginative retort to the romance novel, which boldly experiments with form; the controversial juvenile courtroom drama Too Young to Love; and Box’s favourite, The Truth About Women, an eclectic tapestry of the complex lives of women.

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