“It was horrific. Ten hours of being actually waterboarded,” recalled the actress, who starred as Septa Unella in the HBO series.
Hannah Waddingham is taking a look back at her time starring on Game of Thrones.
While appearing on a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the 49-year-old actress — who played Septa Unella on eight episodes of the HBO series — revealed she developed “chronic claustrophobia” after she was “actually waterboarded” when her character was tortured in the Season 6 finale.
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As fans can recall, after Septa Unella tortured Cersei Lannister (Lena Heady), she walked behind her as Cersei completed her walk of atonement through the Red Keep, ringing a bell and shouting “Shame” repeatedly. Cersei later seeked revenge on Unella, and tortured her by waterboarding her with wine, before turning her over to the Mountain, aka Gregor Clegane.
Waddingham — who was promoting the upcoming film The Fall Guy — reflected on her experience filming the scene after Colbert asked about her past stunt work.
“There weren’t stunts, but Thrones gave me something I wasn’t expecting from it, which was chronic claustrophobia,” she said. “It was horrific. Ten hours of being actually waterboarded. Like, actually waterboarded … 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’s loose.”
The Emmy winner recalled her appearance after she left the set that day. She shared she got into a “fancy pants” elevator, and her “already bleached” blonde hair “went purple” from being waterboarded with grape juice, she “couldn’t speak because the Mountain had his hand over my mouth while I was screaming, and she “had strap marks everywhere like I had been attacked.”
“The lift doors open. One of the other guys who had been shooting something else was like, ‘What has happened to you?'” Waddingham continued. “And I told him everything, and he went, ‘You’re lucky. I’ve just been crawling through s–t on my elbows for four days.'”
“And we were laughing about how both of us are in Game of Thrones, and it kind of doesn’t matter when you’re in Thrones because you just want to give the best,” she added.
Watch Waddingham share the story in the full video, above.
