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Posted in: Game Of Thrones, HBO, TV | Tagged: game of thrones, Hannah Waddingham, HBO, Late Night with Stephen Colbert, lena headey
Game of Thrones Gave Hannah Waddingham Chronic Claustrophobia
Hannah Waddingham had a darkly memorable exit from Game of Thrones that left her with chronic claustrophobia after a waterboarding scene.
Article Summary
- Hannah Waddingham developed chronic claustrophobia from a waterboarding scene in Game of Thrones.
- Portraying Septa Unella, she experienced 10 hours of grueling filming for her character's exit.
- Lena Headey, as Cersei Lannister, also featured in Waddingham's torture scene.
- Waddingham's role in HBO's hit series was quite a departure from her her award-winning performance in Ted Lasso.
Most of the cast members who made their name from HBO's Game of Thrones remain forever grateful for the opportunity the David Benioff and Dan Weiss high fantasy series provided for their careers. Among them is Hannah Waddingham, who played Septa Unella for eight episodes across seasons five and six. While promoting her upcoming film The Fall Guy, the Emmy Award winner for AppleTV's Ted Lasso and star appeared on Late Night with Stephen Colbert to reflect on her time as Cersei Lannister's (Lena Headey) guard, who regularly tried to get the one-time queen regnant to confess her adulterous crimes to the Faith of the Seven.
Game of Thrones: Hannah Waddingham's Trauma from Final Episode
After Cersei finally agrees to confess, the High Septon (Jonathan Pryce) determines she must do the walk of atonement naked back to her home at the Red Keep in the Game of Thrones season five episode "Mother's Mercy." As the ceremony commences, Cersei performs the long walk as the citizens of King's Landing pelt refuse and obscenities at her as Unella rings a bell, repeatedly chanting, "Shame!" Cersei gets her revenge on her in the season six finale, "The Winds of Winter"; after blowing up the Sept of Baelor, she's captured and tortured (including waterboarding). As a final act, the new queen on the Iron Throne (following her son, King Tommen's suicide) taunts her, leaving her fate to her most trusted bodyguard, Ser Gregor Clegane, promising she won't "die for a very long time."
"'Thrones' gave me something I wasn't expecting from it, which was chronic claustrophobia," Waddingham told Colbert. "It was horrific. Ten hours of being actually waterboarded. Like actually. I'm strapped to a table with all these leather straps. I couldn't lift up my head because I said that would be too obvious that it was loose. I'm on my way back [from set] with grape juice all in my hair, so it went purple; I couldn't speak because the Mountain had his hand over my mouth while I was screaming, and I had strap marks everywhere like I had been attacked. One of the other guys who had been shooting something else was like, 'You're lucky, I've just been crawling through shit on my elbow for four days.' It kind of doesn't matter when you're in 'Thrones.' You just want to give the best. Waddingham told Collider in 2021, "I was strapped to a wooden table with proper big straps for 10 hours. Lena was uncomfortable pouring liquid in my face for that long, and I was beside myself. 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?'" Game of Thrones is available to stream on Max. Universal's The Fall Guy comes to theaters on May 3rd.
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