Game of Thrones star Hannah Waddingham reveals ‘horrific’ moment on set

Game of Thrones star Hannah Waddingham has opened up about a traumatic day on set which left her with an actual phobia.

Before starring in Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham played Septa Unella, a vicious zealot in Game of Thrones.

During a recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Waddingham looked back on a “horrific” experience she had filming her own stunts for the popular HBO series.

Waddingham with Lena Headey, who played Cersei.

“Thrones gave me something I wasn’t expecting from it and that was chronic claustrophobia,” she confessed.

She added that she has since spoken about it with executive produces David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. “Good job it’s for them because it was horrific,” she said.

The waterboarding scene apparently left her with claustrophobia.

The actress noted that she spent “10 hours being actually waterboarded” in a scene in which her character is being tortured by Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson.) But this authenticity, she says, is what put the show on “another level.”

She has opened up before about her experience filming the scene, saying it was the worst day of her life.

She also starred in Ted Lasso. Picture: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

In an interview with Collider, Waddingham revealed that the scene was originally going to show her character being raped by The Mountain, but it was changed at the last moment due to the audience’s response to sexual violence on the show.

“I think they’d had so many complaints about the rape of Sansa [Stark] that they chose not to go with it,” she said, referring to Sophie Turner’s character.

She explained, “Unbelievably, they changed it quite at the last minute. I think they possibly changed it when I was mid-air flying to Belfast because suddenly I got sent these new sides that said I would need a wetsuit top. I thought they’d sent me the wrong bits.”

“They were like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be waterboarding instead,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘But we’re not actually doing waterboarding.’ And they were like, ‘No, no, no, we are.’”

This article originally appeared in Decider and was reproduced with permission.