Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham needs extra folks can be open about how exhausting motherhood can really be.
“Thank God she is the utter pleasure of my life as a result of it’s unyielding accountability,” Waddingham, 50, advised The Sunday Times of her 10-year-old daughter in an interview revealed on Saturday, June 7.
“I really feel like extra folks ought to discuss how exhausting it’s,” she added, chuckling. “Not solely bodily exhibiting up for them however being the perfect model of your self, as a result of they reply to actions way over phrases.”
Waddingham, who doesn’t title her daughter publicly, advised the outlet that she determined she wished to have a toddler when she was single in her 30s — however that the trail to parenthood was a troublesome one.
“I used to be advised I couldn’t have kids after which I went down the japanese drugs route, had my physique balanced out,” she defined. On her fortieth birthday, after conceiving her daughter with none medical intervention, she took her child lady dwelling.
Later, Waddingham separated from her daughter’s father, Gianluca Cugnetto, an Italian businessman. At 50, she’s elevating her daughter as a single mom, telling the outlet that after her daughter suffered a well being scare when she was 3 she solely picks jobs that work with and for her life as a single mother.

Hannah Waddingham attends the UK Particular Screening of “Lilo & Sew” at Odeon Luxe Leicester Sq. on Could 18, 2025 in London, England. Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage
“[She’s] my biggest champion and my most horrific critic,” Waddingham stated of her daughter, who’s now additionally exhibiting an curiosity within the leisure enterprise after starring in a college manufacturing of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“She feels such a way of vitality from that, which I really like, however I simply need her to know that for 22 years I’d be on stage pondering, ‘Am I going to make the final Tube?” the proud mother says of her personal struggles to make it in Hollywood earlier than touchdown her breakout position in Apple TV’s hit sequence Ted Lasso.
“I would like her to remember that I actually grafted for 22 years,” she added. “Life just isn’t being picked up by a black Mercedes.”
After greater than 20 years struggling to make it as an onscreen actor, the work has greater than paid off — particularly on the subject of what her newfound fame has made potential for her household.
“I’ve simply develop into extra identified,” Waddingham stated. “Being afforded the posh of the form of roles that I all the time knew I may play and, as a single mum, the posh of having the ability to put my daughter in nice colleges. It does provide you with freedom. I genuinely don’t give a s*** about fame. I by no means have. I by no means will.”