Hannah Waddingham Was Really Waterboarded for 10 Hours on Game of Thrones

She's best known today as the warm, endlessly encouraging Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso. But before Hannah Waddingham won an Emmy for making people cry happy tears, she endured something genuinely harrowing on the set of Game of Thrones - and she's only recently opened up about what it actually cost her.

The Role Nobody Knew About

In seasons five and six of Game of Thrones, Waddingham played Septa Unella - the stern, bell-ringing nun of the Faith of the Seven whose haunting chant of "Shame!" became one of the show's most iconic moments. Unella oversees Cersei Lannister's brutal walk of atonement and is later imprisoned and tortured by Cersei in revenge.

Ten Hours on a Table

For Septa Unella's torture scene in season six, the production pursued authenticity at significant cost to Waddingham. She was strapped to a wooden table with leather restraints while Lena Headey's Cersei poured liquid over her face - repeatedly - for a full 10-hour shooting day. Waddingham told The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in April 2024 that it was "ten hours of being actually waterboarded. Like actually." She couldn't lift her head during takes, and the actor playing The Mountain had his hand over her mouth while she screamed through the scene. She later had visible strap marks on her body and had lost her voice by the end of the day.

The Cost She Did Not Expect

Even Lena Headey was affected by the marathon shoot. "Lena was uncomfortable pouring liquid in my face for that long," Waddingham told Colbert, "and I was beside myself." She had previously described the experience on Collider Ladies Night as "second only to childbirth as the worst day of her life." The scene was also a last-minute rewrite - the original script called for something more disturbing involving The Mountain, but was changed following the backlash over the Sansa Stark assault storyline in the same season.

The Aftermath

Years later, Waddingham revealed on The Late Show that filming left her with something she had not bargained for: chronic claustrophobia. "'Thrones' gave me something I wasn't expecting from it, which was chronic claustrophobia," she said. "It was horrific." The woman who went on to receive an Emmy as Rebecca Welton made a conscious decision in that moment on the table: "Do you serve the piece and get on with it? Or do you chicken out?" She served the piece. The claustrophobia stayed.