Hannah Waddingham has revealed she was deeply affected by one of the more difficult scenes she had to film as part of her time on Game Of Thrones.
Long before we knew her for her roles in Sex Education, Ted Lasso and as the host of Eurovision, Hannah played Septa Unella in the award-winning fantasy drama.
While her character is probably best known for her bell-ringing “shame” scene, another of her most memorable moments saw the character being “waterboarded” – which the British actor has previously made no secret of being a difficult sequence to shoot.
On Monday evening, Hannah paid a visit to Stephen Colbert’s US talk show, where she spoke in depth about the scene in question’s impact on her mental health.
“[Game Of Thrones] gave me something that I wasn’t expecting from it, and that’s chronic claustrophobia,” the Emmy winner explained.
“I’ve talked about it since with David Benioff and Dan Weiss, the two executive producers on it, I was like, ‘good job it’s for them’, because it was horrific. Ten hours of being actually waterboarded. Like, actually waterboarded.”
When the host expressed his disbelief, Hannah continued: “The cinematography of [Game of Thrones], for a series, it’s just a different level. With that comes actual waterboarding.
“So, I’m strapped to a table with all these leather straps, and I couldn’t lift up my head, because they said that [it would be] too obvious that it’s loose…”
Hannah later added: “It kind of doesn’t matter when you’re in Thrones, because you just want to give the best [performance].”
Back in 2021, Hannah shared that filming the Game Of Thrones scenes in question made for the “worst day of my life”.
“They were like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be waterboarding instead’,” she said, after a change of plan on the day. “And I was like, ‘But we’re not actually doing waterboarding.’ And they were like, ‘No, no, no, we are’.
“There, I was strapped to a wooden table with proper big straps for 10 hours. And definitely, other than childbirth, it was the worst day of my life.
“[Lena Headey] was uncomfortable pouring liquid in my face for that long, and I was beside myself. But in those moments, you go, ‘Do you serve the piece and get on with it?’ Or do you chicken out and go, ‘This isn’t what I signed up for’?”