Worst Day of Iwan Rheon's Career? Filming The Most Controversial GoT Scene

A lot of scenes had sparked controversies within the fanbase over eight seasons. But the scene in Season 5's Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken episode which saw Ramsay Bolton (Ivan Rheon) rape Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) on their wedding night while forcing Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) to watch is definitely a good candidate.

To start with, it was pretty much not canonical. It was among the scenes which demonstrated that the showrunners are starting to really deviate from the books, before even running out of book material.

The original novel by George Martin involved a similar scene, but the victim was another girl, who was forced into impersonating a Stark sister – and in fact Arya, not Sansa, as Sansa was by that point deemed guilty of poisoning King Joffrey.

Showrunners not bothering with the pseudo-Arya plotline also made the whole event extremely stupid. Aside from the fact that not even Ramsay was crazy enough to marry the Westeros' Most Wanted Girl, it permanently derailed at least two characters.

To wit, Littlefinger allowed Sansa to slip out of his hands into the hands of a man whom he intended and did eventually backstab anyway, for no apparent gain, and Sansa lost every reason to trust Littlefinger ever again, undermining in advance the drama of the latter's downfall.

And while the book scene got cut off before the really graphic parts, the show allowed it to go on for quite some time.

All of that caused a massive backlash back in 2015, and even Ivan Rheon, who obviously had a lot of fun letting loose on the screen as sadistic psychopath Ramsay, considers filming it the worst day of his career.

"That was horrible," he said in an interview with Metro. "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 explained in further detail:

"Chopping someone's finger off you don't really see it, and when you're doing like a close up, it's a piece of plastic. We're just acting, it's not real. Then something like that where you're in the actual reality of the situation is very difficult to deal with. It was a horrible, horrible day."

So, as it seems, no one except the showrunners liked that scene.