The Septa Unella depicter on the hit HBO series recalls filming an intense scene with Lena Headey which eventually led to her suffering from 'chronic claustrophobia.'
- Apr 3, 2024
AceShowbiz - Hannah Waddingham opened up about her struggles while filming "Game of Thrones". The actress, who portrayed Septa Unella on the hit HBO series, revealed in a new interview that an intense scene of the show led to "chronic claustrophobia."
" 'Thrones' gave me something I wasn't expecting from it and that is chronic claustrophobia," Hanhah told host Stephen Colbert in the Tuesday, April 2 episode of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". She later recalled filming an intense scene alongside Lena Headey, who played Cersei Lannister on the series.
In the said scene, Cersei poured wine on her character's face while demanding her to confess her sins. "I have talked about it since with David Benioff and Dan Weiss, the two exec producers on it, I was like, 'Good job it's for them because it was horrific,' " Hannah shared. "[I had] 10 hours of being actually waterboarded, like actually waterboarded."
The "Ted Lasso" star then commented on the unrivalled cinematography on "Game of Thrones". "The reason why I don't believe ['Game of Thrones'] is touched yet in terms of the cinematography of it for a series, it's just a different level," she explained. "But with that comes actual waterboarding."
She went on to detail her experience filming the dramatic scene. "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,' " the British star said.
"I'm on my way back and I'm in this fancy-pants lift and my hair is already bleached to death [but] I have grape juice all in my hair so it went purple," she further divulged. "I couldn't speak because the Mountain had his hand over my mouth while I was screaming and I had strap marks all over me like I'd been attacked."
She added, "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**t for four days'...But it kind of doesn't matter on 'Thrones'."
This wasn't the first time Hannah talked about how intense the scene was. In a 2021 interview with Collider, she called filming the scene the second worst day of her life after childbirth. She claimed that she "could barely speak" after the day of filming because she "had been screaming through The Mountain's hand, which is quite frightening as a singer to completely lose your voice. I had no voice at all."
