Hannah Waddingham said she’s endured “chronic claustrophobia” since taping her “Game of Thrones” waterboarding scene in the Season 6 finale of the HBO series.
The actress recalled the story during her appearance on “The Late Show” on Tuesday after discussing the scars she obtained doing a punching scene in her new movie, “The Fall Guy.” Stephen Colbert followed that up by asking if she’d gotten any wounds while acting on the fantasy drama series.
“There were stunts, but ‘Thrones’ gave me something I wasn’t expecting from it, and that is chronic claustrophobia,” Waddingham said. “Because I done 10 hours — I mean, I’ve talked about it since David Benioff and Dan Weiss, the two executive producers on it. I was like, ‘Good job.’ It’s for them, because it was horrific. 10 hours of actually being waterboarded. Like, actually waterboarded.”
The scene involved Waddingham, who played Septa Unella on “GoT,” being tortured by Cersei (Lena Headey) by pouring wine on her face. The actress said the show’s intense stunts created its own lane for cinematography, while breaking down the aftermath of the shoot.
“‘Thrones’ is such a — the reason why I don’t believe it’s touched yet in terms of the cinematography of it for a series, it’s just a different level,” Waddingham explained. “With that, actual waterboarding. So I’m strapped to a table with these leather straps and I couldn’t lift up my head because that’s going to be too obvious that it’s loose. I’d quite like it to be loose. So I’m on my way back in and I’m in this fancy pants lift, and I had purple, my hair’s already bleached. I have grape juice in my hair so it went purple. I couldn’t speak because The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson), he had his hand over my mouth because I was screaming. I was screaming and I had strap marks everywhere like I’d been attacked, and the lift door opens.”
She continued: “One of the other guys who’d been shooting something else was like, ‘What has happened to you?’ And I told him everything and he went, ‘Well, you’re lucky, I’ve just been crawling through s–t on my elbows for four days. So we were laughing at the fact that both of us are in ‘Game of Thrones,’ and it kind of doesn’t matter because you just want to give the best.”
“Game of Thrones” ran for eight seasons, from 2011 to 2019. The series was based on the literary works of George R.R. Martin. “The Fall Guy” hits theaters May 3.
