Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer get candid about their new show ‘Ride or Die,’ nailing those intense action scenes and why they still experience imposter syndrome, even with successful careers.
Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham on defying industry expectations
Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham have a candid conversation about redefining age expectations in their new show “Ride or Die.”
Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham barreled past their comfort zones for “Ride or Die.”
The actors portray two best friends who fight for their lives by sparring, springing from moving trains and eluding the enemy in high-speed car chases in Amazon Prime Video’s new series (all eight episodes premiering July 15).
“I don’t quite know how I got through it without killing myself,” Waddingham, 51, tells USA TODAY with a laugh, beside Spencer, 56.
Waddingham got a taste for the action-comedy genre in the 2024 film “The Fall Guy,” playing villainous producer Gail Meyer. “I’d done my own stunts in terms of being up in a helicopter and spinning around and punching Ryan Gosling in the face,” Waddingham says.
But for “Ride or Die,” she trained in combat, gunplay and weapons throughout the six months of production.
“I could never have dreamt that I would be able to learn and discipline myself to get to that stage,” she says.
‘Ride or Die’ and breaking genre barriers
“Ride or Die” follows Waddingham and Spencer’s characters as they face the challenge of reinventing themselves after the tectonic plates of their lives shift. Debbie (Spencer) devoted her entire life to her family and husband’s career, with hopes that David (Jamie Parker) would be appointed prime minister. She’s shocked when he asks for a divorce – and her world is further rocked when she learns that her longtime confidant Judith (Waddingham) is an assassin.
Meanwhile, Judith’s agency dismisses her as “a woman of a certain age,” insisting she’ll become unpredictable and difficult as she gets older. As a result, Judith feels the job that she’s sacrificed so much for is slipping through her steady-on-the-trigger fingers.
Spencer says she can relate to Judith’s challenges, admitting, “I’m absolutely positive, in rooms that I’m not in, that people refer to me as ‘a woman of a certain age.'”
But despite that, she doesn’t let it bother her. “Because you know what?” Spencer says. “As a woman of a certain age, I know I have life experience[s] that sort of color the stage of life that I’m in and the confidence that we carry. We just carry ourselves in a different way.”
“We know that we’re great at what we do. We know that we’re still vital and viable,” Spencer adds, “and redefining that in this show is exciting because sometimes we forget.”
Waddingham is in full agreement, noting that women “of a certain age” can also be described as “vital, feisty, present, loving, all these things.” She then points out that similar conversations aren’t had about the opposite sex: “You just don’t ever hear ‘men of a certain age.’ Ever. Not once, ever.”
Waddingham, Spencer on battling imposter syndrome
While working on “Ride or Die” and performing choreography dreamt up by stunt coordinator Jan Petřina, Spencer realized how often her career makes her feel uneasy – and why she loves that feeling.
“I discovered that there really isn’t a comfort zone, that every job is a new one,” she says, noting that she’s “always not comfortable at the beginning” of a new project but settles in time.
“I realized that on this job,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow, I’m not comfortable, and I am learning this character.’ And that’s good. You want to be challenged. I think we don’t grow as humans if we don’t challenge ourselves, and we certainly don’t grow as artists if we don’t challenge ourselves.”
Waddingham emphasizes the significance of her costar’s candid confession.
“It’s really important to say things like that,” she says. “You’re listening to an Oscar winner talking, saying that she’s never comfortable in any job. That’s so great to be that transparent and go, ‘I haven’t got all my s— together.’ Neither have I.”
“I feel like an imposter on every set I’m on,” the “Ted Lasso” star continues. “I feel like someone’s going to go, ‘I thought she was better than that. That’s awkward.’ But you kind of have to go in with that. Who would want to be so arrogant as to think you’ve got it down all the time? I don’t think that’s healthy for anyone.”
