Hannah Waddingham's Worst Day on Game of Thrones Set Got Really Dark

As Unella, Waddingham portrayed a Septa of the Faith who tortured Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and forced her to do the walk of shame through King's Landing in season 5 of the show.

In season 6 the tables are turned and it's Unella who is imprisoned by Cersei. During the final shocking scene, Unella is waterboarded (well wineboarded) and mocked by Cersei before being left alone in the locked room with The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson).

While it's never explicitly stated, the implication is that Unella would be tortured and raped by The Mountain before eventually being killed. Indeed, Waddingham confirmed that the original plan had been for Unella to be raped.

However, she believes the showrunners were reluctant to include the scene following the rape of Sansa which caused outrage in some quarters and brought in several complaints.

Of course, the whole issue between the two ladies was that of sexual morality and it was almost impossible for the writers to completely ignore the rape of Unella. And to be fair, even though it was off-screen, it was pretty chilling.

Of course, this decision left the showrunners with a dilemma. Cersei had to have her revenge on screen too. And so, things changed to the waterboarding of Unella.

And that change came about quite late in the day. Waddingham said she was flying to Belfast to film the scene when she was informed about what it involved. What she didn't know at that moment was that she would actually be waterboarded for the scene.

In the end, she was strapped to a wooden table for 10 hours in what she described as "the worst day of my life" other than childbirth. But, she continued that it was moments like that that made her ask herself "do I serve the piece and get on with it or…chicken out"?

Looking back at it, Waddingham is able to laugh about what GoT actors had to do in aid of the show.

But she also suffered long-term effects from recording the scene as it gave her "claustrophobia around water" as she discovered while watching a show in which another actor was having their face put into water and she "got in a terrible panic attack."

Thinking about the scene itself, she said she was reluctant to have a strap around her neck in case it affected her singing. But she was told that it wouldn't be authentic if she could lift her head.

She was also told that the "remainder of her glass of red wine" that Cersei was scripted to pour on Unella's face was not enough, with Dan Weiss suggesting a carafe instead.

Confident the production wasn't going to let her die, she decided to "get on with it, be uncomfortable" and "take people to the nth degree of their emotions."