When Michael Bublé met Hannah Waddingham
Grammy Award-winning singer Michael Bublé has become synonymous with Christmas, with his smooth crooning style stirring comparisons with legendary artists such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. He admits he loves the festive season!
After releasing his first festive album, Christmas, in 2011, thousands of memes of his face go viral all over social media every December.
However, his world-class reputation goes far beyond light-hearted images depicting him thawing out for the Christmas holidays. Having sold more than 75 million records, he has won 15 Juno Awards from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts, five Grammy Awards and the American Music Award for Favourite Adult Contemporary Artist.
The 49-year-old Canadian has also set a trend for collaborations with other leading stars during the holiday season. One of the most famous was a duet with Game of Thrones star Hannah Waddingham in 2021, when they sang Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) on NBC’s Christmas in the City show.
While the one-off TV performance has never been released as a single, the video has racked up more than one million views on YouTube. The sheer power and emotive performance from both artists has made it a memorable piece of television history that’s viewed time and time again.
Michael Bublé at Christmas
Although many fans associate Bublé with the festive period, his 2011 album, Christmas, was actually his seventh studio album. The crooner’s career spans far more than seasonal songs. Known for his smooth jazz and pop ballads, he released his debut album, First Dance, in 1995, followed by BaBalu in 2001, which achieved platinum status in the UK.
He enjoyed a successful run of hit albums and built up a following all over the world, launching his first of seven live concert tours in 2004. Playing to sell-out stadiums, he grossed £1.1 million per night with his An Evening With Michael Bublé tour between 2019 and 2022.
When he first became associated with Christmas, the star felt perturbed at the number of memes that suddenly appeared online, featuring him in all sorts of festive scenarios. In particular, one showed him emerging from a cave just for the festive period, while another depicted him thawing out, after being frozen for the rest of the year.
Concerned he was becoming known just as a Christmas singer, he was against the memes at first, but soon learned to embrace the publicity, even joining in by poking fun at himself. Elaborating on the cave meme, he published his own showing himself living in a cave as Batman after someone asked what he did for the other eleven months of the year!
His first Christmas collaboration was in 2004, when he performed with the group Barenaked Ladies on their Christmas album, Barenaked for the Holidays, on a song called Elf’s Lament, preceding his own debut festive album by seven years.
Hannah Waddingham West End
London-born singer, actress and television star Hannah Waddingham played Septa Unella in Game of Thrones. Her character became known as the “Shame Nun” after she tortured Queen Cersei Lannister by making her walk naked in public while shouting “shame” at her.
More recently, she has starred in comedy drama series Ted Lasso as Rebecca Welton, the new owner of fictional English Premier League football club AFC Richmond, who hires American football coach Lasso, causing scepticism among colleagues. The show has rocketed her to fame and her performance has been widely lauded.
Prior to her TV series, Waddingham, 50, enjoyed a hugely successful career in the West End and on Broadway. Her most memorable roles included Christine Warner in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Beautiful Game, Desirée Armfeldt in A Little Night Music and The Wicked Witch of the West in the West End run of The Wizard of Oz in 2011.
Her performance in the comedy show Spamalot, which ran from 2006 to 2008 in the West End, led to Waddingham’s famous meeting with Bublé. The musical is the stage version of the comedy film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Waddingham played The Lady of the Lake on stage in both the West End and Broadway, receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her role.
Michael Bublé and Hannah Waddingham friendship
In an interview with ETonline, Bublé described the moment they first met, explaining he was in the audience of the West End performance of Spamalot. After the show, he went backstage to meet the cast and said he and Waddingham became “instant friends”. Describing her as “wonderful, humble and funny”, he felt an affinity with the star, whose career path had followed a similar one to his own. “She fought a long time for her ‘moment’, just like I did, and it came with Ted Lasso,” he said.
The duo kept in touch following their initial meeting and became firm friends over the years. It seemed natural that when Bublé began preparing for his epic Christmas show in 2021 on NBC, he wanted Waddingham to play a key role, telling producer Lorne Michaels, “I need Hannah.” He said she embodied the “spirit of Christmas”, adding, “She is proof that goodness, light and kindness will always come back when you give beautiful things out to the universe.”
After they sang Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) accompanied by a 48-piece orchestra, Bublé said working with Waddingham on the NBC Christmas special was “honestly a joy”.
