Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer Are Ready to ‘Ride or Die’

Watching Amazon Prime’s new show, Ride or Die, all I could think about was RuPaul interviewing Hannah Waddingham, exclaiming to her, “my goodness, you’re a lot of woman.”  RuPaul gets it.

Ride or Die is an eight-episode action-comedy created by Tessa Coates and starring Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham as longtime besties Debbie and Judith. The catch: Judith isn’t the mild-mannered forensic accountant Debbie thought she was, but an international gun-shooting, ass-kicking assassin. After a job goes sideways, the buddies are forced on the run across Europe, pursued by killers, criminals, and law enforcement, turning their friendship into an ongoing literal test of loyalty together.

It’s a classic whodunnit storyline with a lot of gunplay and wisecracks. And the show is fun. It’s not a high-stakes drama, nor is it Spencer playing the smart-mouthed maid as in The Help or Waddingham playing the covered-up nun in Game of Thrones; instead, the plot of Ride or Die is that these women are fearless and badass as they crack jokes and breeze past all of the tired plots of action meets mystery meets two friends bonding over insane circumstances. After breaking out in Ted Lasso, Waddingham’s moment has arrived. After this, she could snatch a role away from Jason Statham any day of the week, and honestly, thank God. He could never kick a guy in the chest with heels.

Immediately, it’s clear that Spencer and Waddingham have chemistry. As the show develops, the viewer believes that they really are old pals who’ve been hitting the estate sales and book clubs together. There’s a natural vibe that’s refreshing to see, especially showing two women in their fifties as action leads when not many in their demographic get to hang in those roles. What Spencer adds is a gravity that works: without her as an emotional counterpoint, Ride or Die wouldn’t work. The perfection of the soup lies in the balance of the two working together to find out how they’ve been dropped into a very ugly mess.

Both characters in Ride or Die are capable in different ways. There’s something satisfying about watching adult women who have lived entire lives before the story starts instead of another 26-year-old discovering she’s secretly special. Liam Neeson can be a shoot-em-up action star into his 70s; Statham is pushing 60; Tom Cruise is 64. Nobody finds it remarkable that middle-aged men can still shoot, fight, fuck, joke and save the world. Putting Spencer and Waddingham in that position gives an old storyline a new coat of lipstick.

After watching the whole eight episodes of the show, there’s a lot to like about the Ride or Die story — the show gets brutal beyond genre while also confronting age, what it’s like to be a woman in a different role and the complexities of relationships both good and bad. I’ve come to learn something in life, rarely is someone strictly good or bad — everyone’s got skeletons and stuff they wish they didn’t have in their emotional backyard, Ride or Die lives with that credo and uses it as fuel for a storyline that’s not predictable, well most of it. There were a few “obviously” moments, but either way, watch it. It’s worth the binge.