Who plays Mae in Ted Lasso season 4? The actress was a Doctor Who villain long before
The Crown & Anchor's all-knowing landlady has one of the great British character-actor résumés — including a stint trying to blow up Cardiff for profit.
Mae is played by Annette Badland, 76, and if you're looking her up this week, odds are it's because season 4 just did the unthinkable to her. But first, the answer the search box wants: Badland has run the Crown & Anchor since Ted Lasso's very first episode — pulling pints, dispensing oracle-grade wisdom, rearranging pub seating by vibe — and she's one of the originals who came back for the season 4 women's-team era alongside Sudeikis, Waddingham, Goldstein, and company.
The Slitheen years
Long before Richmond, Badland was busy being extraordinary inside an alien skin suit. In 2005's revived Doctor Who, she played Margaret Blaine — actually Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, an alien wearing a murdered civil servant's body — across "Aliens of London," "World War Three," and "Boom Town." That last one remains a fan-favorite bottle episode: the Doctor takes his captured villain out for one final dinner, and Badland turns a monster-of-the-week into something close to tragedy. The rest of the résumé is just as dense:
- EastEnders: 219 episodes as the softly terrifying Aunt Babe
- Outlander: Mrs. Fitzgibbons, feeding and bullying Castle Leoch into order
- Wizards vs Aliens and 1980s Bergerac, because British TV never wastes a great face
- An Olivier Award nomination for The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, back in 1993
The reason everyone's googling her this week
Spoiler for season 4, episode 9, in the most literal sense: Mae dies. The show gives her a perfect final day — riding the bus with the Lady Greyhounds, a locker-room pep talk, watching them win 4-2 — before Rebecca gets the call. Badland only learned the fate when the script arrived, and Jason Sudeikis delivered the news in person:
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"He was very honorable and came to my room and talked to me about it."
Her verdict on the exit itself is the most Mae thing imaginable:
"I think this is the best passing she could possibly have."
She also made clear what the women's team meant to the character — "This is enormous for her. Huge. As a woman, that that's attainable now is tremendous" — and summed up six years behind the bar with
"Quite a shock. But what a privilege to have been in it at all."
Season 4 continues weekly on Apple TV; the pub, presumably, will never be reseated correctly again.
Previously we wrote: Line of Fire NBC premiere ratings and review: Peter Krause got out-rated by Celebrity Name That Tune
