Actress Hannah Waddingham decided to skip a performance at the BBC Proms just a few hours before the start of the event in order to express her support for the ongoing strike by actors in the United States.
At one point, the actor known for his role in Ted Lasso was scheduled to headline the BBC Fantasy, Myths and Legends Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday.
However, Waddingham reported that she “very sadly” could not continue with the event that afternoon.
“It will be a magical night, but due to my ongoing support for the Sag-Aftra strike, I must respectfully step down,” she added in a statement that was uploaded online. “It will be an incredible night.”
I can’t wait to perform at the Royal Albert Hall again as soon as humanly possible!
It wasn’t until Friday that the actress’s selection as host was made public. Katie Derham, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3, and Ali Plumb, a film critic on Radio 1, took up for her after she was let go.
Lines of pickets
The Prom, which included performances of music from popular franchises such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones, was broadcast live on Radio 3 and will be rebroadcast on BBC Two on Saturday.
In recent months, Waddingham, who is most well-known for her performance as Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso, has been expanding her presenting career by taking on additional gigs.
This year, she hosted both the Eurovision Song Contest and the Olivier Awards, and she received a lot of appreciation for doing so. Her most recent performance at the BBC Proms was in 2016.
Waddingham has been vocal in his support of the strike by the US actors’ union SAG-AFTRA as well as the strike by the writers’ union Writers Guild of America (WGA), and he has been spotted on picket lines in the United States.
In a dispute on pay in the streaming era and the application of artificial intelligence, members of the WGA went on strike in May, and actors joined them in their walkout in July.
Members of the union have been banned from promoting their finished works and have been instructed to stop filming with US studios, which has resulted in the upcoming film festival season having a significantly reduced likelihood of celebrity attendance.
However, depending on how their films were paid for, some performers are permitted to participate in promotional work while others are not.
Because the films in which they star have been granted Sag-Aftra interim waivers, the actors Adam Driver, Mads Mikkelsen, and Jessica Chastain are all scheduled to make an appearance at the Venice Film Festival within the next two weeks.
Because the films in question are independent works and were not manufactured by large studios, the request for exemptions was successful.
As a direct consequence of this, Driver will make an appearance on the red carpet to promote Ferrari, in which he plays Enzo Ferrari, a pioneer in Italian auto racing.
Memory is the film that Chastain will be promoting, and it is her first film performance since she earned an Academy Award for The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
In addition, Mikkelsen will go to Venice for the premiere of his film The Promised Land, which is an adaptation of Ida Jessen’s novel The Captain and Ann Barbara and will be released in 2020.
