Hannah Waddingham was part of the hit HBO series during the fifth and sixth seasons. However, there was a moment in particular that the actress did not enjoy and categorized as a traumatic experience.
Game of Thrones has seen a large number of interpreters come and go throughout its eight seasons. And one of those people was Hannah Waddingham. The actress, best known for her roles in Ted Lasso and S-x Education, played Septa Unella during the show's fifth and sixth seasons.
At first, Unella's character earned the sympathy of fans for the way she challenged and kept Cersei (Lena Headey) out of her grasp. However, the whole situation took a turn for the worse when, at the end of the sixth season, in the episode The Winds of Winter, Cersei captures Unella and leaves her in the hands of The Mountain to be tortured.
This scene became one of the most remembered in the series, especially since it showed that Cersei was the perfect villain. The actors also remember that scene, but in the case of Hannah Waddingham, the actress recalled the bad moment she went through when filming it, and the trauma it left her for a lifetime.
The interpreter revealed that at first, the scene was going to be very different because the er character would actually be abused by La Montaña, but after criticism from fans for Sansa's terrible scene, they decided to change it. It was in this way, that from one moment to the next, the actress was informed that her character would be tortured and drowned.
The actress didn't like this last-minute change at all, but wanting to go professional and take on the challenge, she agreed to shoot the scene. Hannah Waddingham spent 10 hours chained to the table and categorized that moment as traumatizing. "After the delivery, that was the worst day of my life," she recalled. In addition, she expressed that her co-star Lena Headey felt terrible and uncomfortable throwing liquid in her face for so long.
In addition, she added that the strap around her neck was very tight, since that way, the scene looked more real. “I kept telling myself that the production was not going to let me die, that I had to go ahead and commit to the moment,” she added. "The funny thing is, at the end of the day, when we finished filming, Miguel Sapochnik, the director, came up to me with a cup of tea and a sandwich and said, 'Hello honey, are you okay?' And I wasn't well," Waddingham concluded.
The truth is that the whole situation caused the actress to develop claustrophobia when near the water and a "terrible panic" every time she saw a similar scene in a series or movie. Furthermore, she recalled that when they finished filming the scene, she could barely speak from having been screaming for so long.
Luckily for her, Hannah Waddingham was able to cope with her trauma and to this day, she lost her fear, and can now look back on that moment as an anecdote rather than an ordeal. After that episode, the actress was not part of Game of Thrones again, but she continued to be part of major productions.
