Badland 2019

[Janne Evers]

TheBisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness is a rolling landscape of badlands which offers some of the most unusual scenery found in the Four Corners Region. Time and natural elements have etched a fantasy world of strange rock formations made of interbedded sandstone, shale, mudstone, coal, and silt. The weathering of the sandstone forms hoodoos - weathered rock in the form of pinnacles, spires, cap rocks, and other unusual forms. Fossils occur in this sedimentary landform. Translated from the Navajo language, Bisti (Bis-tie) means "a large area of shale hills." De-Na-Zin (Deh-nah-zin) takes its name from the Navajo words for "cranes."

Y'all! We have been invited into the Crown & Anchor by the pub owner herself! This bonus episode is a conversation with cast member Annette Badland, who portrays Mae on Ted Lasso.

We had the opportunity to chat with Annette back in late August, after we connected with her on Twitter and our schedules finally lined up! We chatted about her involvement with Ted Lasso, her stint on Doctor Who, and her extensive work on stage and radio drama. We also discussed poetry, risky charity stunts, and what it means to find truth in a character when telling their story.

Be sure to stick around until the very end of this episode for a special surprise from Annette!

Discussed On This Episode

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A full transcript of this episode can be found here.

Richmond Til We Die is a conversation about the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso, where we discuss the characters, their relationships to each other, and how they're able to make us laugh until we can hardly breathe one minute and then feel with the deepest parts of our hearts the next. When you're here, you're a Greyhound!

Welcome back to the Crown and Anchor, greyhounds. This is a bonus episode of Richmond Til We Die, a conversation about the Apple TV plus show Ted laso where we explore the characters, their relationships to each other, how they're able to make us laugh until we can hardly breathe one moment and then feel what the deepest parts of our hearts the next. I'm Marissa and I had such a wonderful time meeting one of my birthday buddies while we recorded this episode.

And I'm Brett and today we are excited to share with y'all our conversation with the owner of the crown and anchor herself and that badland has charmed her way into our hearts with her portrayal of may on Ted lasso. We love her character for the way she commands the pub while also keeping Jeremy Paul and Baz in line, at least when they're patronizing her establishment. Annette explained to us the May is seen by the cast and the production team as the matriarch of the show. She's not exactly a mother figure to Ted, but she does occasionally dispense wisdom to him and to beard and the lads and everyone who darkens the doors of the Richmond local. Marisa Christian and I had the pleasure of chatting with a net shortly after the release of season two episode six which means we were able to ask a question about her soggy bottom dance as well as reflect on her expert comedic use of inappropriate hand science on the show. In addition to Ted lasso, and has appeared on popular shows like Doctor Who, EastEnders, Outlander and Midsomer Murders, she has received an Olivier Award nomination for her work on stage and throughout her career, she has worked alongside some of the most famous actors, directors and writers in the business while telling stories through the mediums of television, film, radio and life theater.

And speaking of nets, generosity, you'll want to make sure you stick around until after the credits of this particular episode. I don't want to spoil it but suffice it to say that we've got a great surprise for y'all that involves exclusive Annette badland content. All right, let's get it started. We hope that y'all enjoy our conversation with Annette. Please join us in giving a warm welcome to the pub owner of our favorite local, the legendary Mae herself, Annette Badland!

Oh, well. There's absolutely no trace of an actor in my lineage before me. It was parents stay as it is for a great many actors. I felt the audience for the first time. I'm an only child and I got to sit and enact a character poem by john Keats called Meg's merrilees and I just felt the audience I could make them laugh and I could stop them laughing haha great alchemy there just to to have that power. So that was when I was about 10 and it just stayed with me and I was in the school and Graham's the local we have an institution called the Women's Institute which is women and they you know, they call Can they do drama it was it's was things to enliven women's lives and enable them. And they invited me into a play that they were entering into a festival, so I got to join them. And then I started to take classes, there was a drama school called lambda and you could take external exams just to see if I could do it if I didn't know if people liked me because they recognize me. So I had to test whether I actually could do it or not. So it was that and then on into drama school eventually, and I went to a place called ECE 15, which is very connected to the method. A lady called Joan Littlewood have a theatre company in the east of London, and it's where people like Barbara Windsor, I don't know if you would know her from the carry on films and very much improvised. Like your your method in America.

In my mind, everybody in England would recognize you because you've been in so many iconic TV shows over there. And in the United States, there are probably a lot of people who are getting to meet you for the first time in your role in total. So if we could have a time machine and see you in one, it could be on stage or one thing you've been on on TV. One piece that was your favorite that you would want to introduce people to which one would it be?

And I think favorites are hard because you love things for different reasons. But as you said, Time Machine are plump on this occasion for Doctor Who, which I was part of the team that when it was regenerated with Chris Eccleston in England, and Russell T Davis was writing the scripts, I went on to do two episodes as part of a trio. And Russell liked so much what I was doing that he wrote an episode just for me. So I became I was always an alien as slitheen and my character's name was Margaret Blaine.

And, as Margaret Blaine, she was the mayor of Cardiff and wanted to put her nuclear power station where Cardiff castle was and so the doctor had to stop and it was just a huge gift to me. It's got absolutely everything in it. There are lines like dinner in bondage works for me. Two very sad lonely moments and I just ran the gamut there's the script was such a delight when it arrived. It arrived around Christmas time. And as I say, it just has every possible emotion in it. So I guess I'll plump for that in the Time Machine, pop that in there.

Christian said a lot of Americans might not know your work, but I am a huge fan of British crime dramas. And I in fact, one of my favorites is I guess the reason you're in one of those episodes that I made while I didn't make I invited Brett to watch that episode last night because I said, you know, we love We love a net as made in Ted Lasso, but she's so scary. In this episode of Agatha raisin. So do you do you love to play I mean, you don't seem to have a type that seems like in all your work, you get to do kind of everything from the lovely pub owner to the scary murderous.

Yeah, I am lucky and I relish that I do play a lot of dark parts. I mean Margaret Blaine in Doctor Who is quite dark. But I it that's a great thing to relish really to, to involve yourself in that and find the dark corners of yourself or grow. You know, a small thing in you, that irritates you and you can grow it into something that can eventually make you feel murderous. And then I get things like Outlander, I think lots of American audience know Outland, too. So there I am. Mrs. Fitz, who runs Castle Lee is a great more main character. So I am very fortunate I, I haven't really been pigeon holed. So that's fantastic. And I, I avoided if I can anyway.

Yes, yeah, absolutely. We should probably ask just one or two questions about about Ted lassos, since that's what our podcast is about. And the listeners may Riot if we don't. But this is a very general question, but how did you come to be involved with the project, I was

invited to audition and went to a casting director and went on tape. And Jason said he liked the tie, actually engaged with the people my icontact and things was something that he really picked up on from from that tape. So I very luckily got invited in which was fantastic. Obviously, Jason when he wrote this couldn't have possibly had any idea of COVID coming along. But it is so important and has been, you know, crucial to a lot of people and is just fabulous to have in the world at this moment in time, I think

I like the truth and honesty of the performances. The delicacy of human beings connecting. And it could have been much fresher than that. And I think that's something to be relished. I enjoyed that very much. Mae hasn't changed enormously. Jason's always seen her as the matriarch and the diehard fan and, you know, so a lot of that hasn't altered. You see different aspects of it, but it's always sitting there underneath anyway.

Yeah, and I love how you know, you may not appear in every episode, but there are so many important scenes that when I imagined them back in my head, you play a crucial role in and so I think about when the team is having the meeting about the haunted training room, and you're standing up there next to Jason, and you command that moment. And we've talked about on our podcast, the barbecue sauce scene with the darts, and your interaction there. With Rupert, and then again, when you like, ring the bell, when everybody gets their free drinks, when you see the scripts, and when you're filming, does it feel like you're centered in that moment? Or is that something that, you know, it plays out, and then when you see the show back, is a little bit of a surprise for you.

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