A Game Of Thrones Actor Was *Actually* Waterboarded To Make A Torture Scene Look Realistic (2024)

Game of Thrones might have been a traumatic watch for those of us who sat through all eight seasons only to be left with that ending, but actors on the show were left with serious conditions because of the mental toll of filming some of its more visceral scenes.

Hannah Waddingham played Septa Unella in Game of Thrones, who was one of the nun-like figures from the Septa of the Faith of the Seven. You know, the lady who brutally tortured Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) after her fall from grace?

You might recall that Cersei regains her power in the show, and then she takes her revenge on Unella by torturing her — including some pretty gnarly waterboarding scenes. Waddingham has revealed she wasn’t acting in that scene — she was actually being waterboarding. Um, what?!

Waddingham told The Late Show that during filming, she was actually strapped down and had her head forced into the water to make the scene look realistic. The trauma of being tortured on set has left her with “chronic claustrophobia”.

“Thrones gave me something I wasn’t expecting from it, which was chronic claustrophobia,” Waddingham said.

“It was horrific. Ten hours of being actually waterboarded. Like actually. I’m strapped to a table with all these leather straps. I couldn’t lift up my head because they said it will be too obvious that it’s loose.”

Waddingham recalled being on her way back from set, her hair filled with grape juice, her body battered and her voice lost — something that scared her as a singer.

“I couldn’t speak because the Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson) had his hand over my mouth while I was screaming and I had strap marks everywhere like I had been attacked,” she said.

“One of the other guys who had been shooting something else was like, ‘You’re lucky, I’ve just been crawling through sh*t on my elbow for four days.’ It kind of doesn’t matter when you’re in Thrones. You just want to give the best.”

Waddingham first discussed the waterboarding scene in 2021 when she said it was the second worst day of her life (the first being going through childbirth).

“I was strapped to a wooden table with proper big straps for 10 hours,” she said.

“Lena was uncomfortable pouring liquid in my face for that long, and I was beside myself. But in those moments you have to think, do you serve the piece and get on with it or do you chicken out and go, ‘No, this isn’t what I signed up for, blah, blah, blah?’”

I mean… I don’t think it’s “chickening out” if you refuse to be literally tortured for work, to the point where it leaves you with a lifelong phobia, but that’s just me I guess.

Waddingham is not the only Game of Thrones cast member who has felt a mental toll from filming the show’s more violent and distressing scenes.

Sophie Turner, whose character Sansa Stark was brutally abused, tortured and raped on multiple occasions in the TV series, told The Cut in 2022 that she’s “sure I’ll exhibit symptoms of trauma down the road” from the scenes she filmed as a teenager.

Iwan Rheon, whose character Ramsay Bolton raped Sansa Stark, said the rape scene was the “worst day” of his career and “very difficult to deal with.”

“That was horrible — nobody wanted to be there. Nobody wants to do that, but if it’s telling a story then you have to tell it truthfully,” he toldMetroin 2020.

“It was very, very hard watching [it]. It’s a horrible thing that happens.”

Imagine having to suffer as these stars did, only for the show to end in a way that killed its entire cultural relevance. I hope they’re at least getting huge royalties for their time.