Hannah Waddingham Had “Claustrophobia” Filming “Game Of Thrones” Torture Scene As Septa Unella
Hannah Waddingham, known for her role in Game of Thrones, recently opened up about the challenges she faced while filming a particularly intense scene for the show.
During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the 49-year-old actress revealed the unexpected aftermath of filming. She explained how the scene, in which her character Septa Unella is subjected to Cersei’s wrath, left her with chronic claustrophobia.
The ordeal involved being waterboarded for a grueling ten hours, as she recalled. “[I had] 10 hours of being actually waterboarded, like actually waterboarded,” she stated.
Hannah expressed her discomfort, mentioning her conversation with the show’s executive producers, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, about the intense experience.
Despite the cinematic brilliance of Game of Thrones, Waddingham highlighted the physical toll such scenes took. She described being strapped to a table for hours, unable to move her head, all while enduring the trauma of waterboarding.
In her words; “So I’m strapped to a table with all these leather straps and I couldn’t lift up my head because they said that was going to be too obvious that it’s loose and I was like, ‘Right, I’d quite like them to be loose.’”
In a moment of dark humor, she recounted how her appearance after filming shocked others, with grape juice stains in her hair and strap marks across her body. “I couldn’t speak because the Mountain had his hand over his mouth while I was screaming and I had strap marks all over me like I’d been attacked…The lift doors open and one of the other guys who’s been filming something else is like, ‘What happened to you?’ I told him everything and he went, ‘You’re lucky, I’ve just been crawling on my elbows in s— for four days’…” she shared further.
However, she acknowledged that such sacrifices were part of the territory when working on a show like Game of Thrones.
Reflecting on the experience during a previous interview, Hannah likened it to childbirth in terms of intensity. She emphasized the importance of staying committed to the role, even in the face of extreme discomfort.
“I was strapped to a wooden table with proper big straps for ten hours. And definitely, other than childbirth, it was the worst day of my life. Because Lena was uncomfortable pouring liquid in my face for that long, and I was beside myself,” she shared.
“But in those moments you have to think, do you serve the piece and get on with it or do you chicken out and go, ‘No, this isn’t what I signed up for, blah, blah, blah?’” she said further.
