Okay, no one is likely to say they actually felt sorry for the pesky Septa Unella in “Game Of Thrones”. After driving the naked Cersei (Lena Headey) through the streets of King’s Landing screaming “shame” and otherwise not exactly a paragon of humanity, the horror of Cersei’s brutal revenge on Unella was mixed with perhaps a little glee – but that ended in the latter when Cersei left Unella in the hands of the no longer quite human mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson).
But almost worse is what Unella actress is Hannah Waddingham happened on set – for the torments Unella endured were not only played! Waddingham explained in an interview with that she had to endure “ten hours of waterboarding” to film the scene where Cersei tortures Unella by continuously pouring wine in her face.
Besides giving birth, waterboarding on the “GoT” set was definitely Waddingham’s “worst day of her life”:
“I was tied to a wooden table for ten hours, with very tight, large cuffs.” And her colleague Lena Headey, who was visibly uncomfortable, had to keep pouring liquid all over her face. The fact that her colleague was so uncomfortable made it even worse for her.
Hannah Waddingham aka Unella: Suffer for art
She had to decide at that point whether she was going to do it for the series and grit her teeth or whether she should complain that this wasn’t what she signed up for. Well, we saw the Unella torture scene in Game Of Thrones season 6 – so Waddingham clearly chose the former.
But all this did not leave her without a trace: the next day she could hardly speak because during the shoot she continued to scream loudly while the mountain covered her mouth, and she also had bruises. The water torture in particular also left traces in the long term:
“I didn’t realize at first that I now have claustrophobia when it comes to water. But when I saw the camera focus on the face of an actor who dived underwater during a show, I panicked.”
Original plan: rape through the mountain
In fact, Unella’s torture scene was supposed to be completely different – the initial plan was for Unella to be raped by the mountain. It’s something that’s now left to the public’s imagination as the door closes behind the couple. But according to Waddingham, the rape was originally meant to be shown – but then they waived this after Sansa’s rape (Sophia Turner) was harshly criticized.
Then the scene was changed, which Hannah Waddingham only found out about when she was on a plane to Belfast to film this episode. The script changes now stipulated that she had to wear a wetsuit – and so she had bad suspicions.
When she then asked the team what was going on, she was told, “Oh, we’re waterboarding instead.” Waddingham couldn’t believe it would actually be filmed; she thought there was cheating. But wrong thought.
At the end of the shooting day, director Miguel Sapochnik approached her and asked if everything was okay, to which she said no. Sapochnik then said, “The crew just told me we’re actually waterboarding with you here,” to which Waddingham replied simply, “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me.”
In the collidersDuring the interview, she could recall at least one other situation that day with a smile. When she returned to the hotel that evening totally exhausted, she complained to a colleague and was told in turn that he had been wading through shit up to his elbow for four days. “And we said to each other, ‘See? You haven’t really been on Game Of Thrones if you haven’t really had a hit.’”