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Actress Waddingham: Agony for quality
Photo: John Phillips/Getty Images
The Englishwoman Hannah Waddingham had her absolute breakthrough in her acting career relatively late: as club boss Rebecca Welton in the football comedy series “Ted Lasso”. In it, the title character, the coach from Kansas played by Jason Sudeikis, brings her cookies every morning. But Waddingham also had to endure far less pleasant moments in her career.
At this point it is expressly not meant that Waddingham had to put on a good face about a lame gag by the German entertainer Elton when she hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023 and he handed over the German ESC jury points.
No, Hannah Waddingham herself spoke about her experiences on the set of "Game of Thrones" during her appearance on the "Late Show" on the US television network CBS earlier this week. In the series she played Septa Unella, a clergyman whose first major appearance comes in the fifth season when she leads Cersei Lannister naked through the streets and repeatedly shouts "shame." But Cersei gets her revenge: at the end of season six, she has Unella captured and tortures her by repeatedly pouring wine on the woman who is tied to a board.
It is this scene that remains unpleasant in Hannah Waddingham's memory. She spoke to talk show host Stephen Colbert about the “real waterboarding” that she had to endure. Filming lasted ten hours. Since then, she has suffered from chronic claustrophobia, says Waddingham. She has since spoken to the series creators David Bennioff and DB Weiss - at least the terrible experiences led to a good result.
Hannah Waddingham had already spoken about filming the torture scene in previous interviews. She told the website “Collider” in 2021 that there was originally a rape scene in the script before it was quickly replaced by wine torture. "Apart from the birth of my child, it was the worst day of my life," Waddingham said. Her daughter was born shortly before she began working on “Game of Thrones.” Cersei actress Lena Headey felt noticeably uncomfortable about having liquid poured into her face, Waddingham said.
In an interview with Esquire magazine in 2021, she described her thoughts while filming as follows: "Am I going to be a sissy and say I can't do it? Or will I just believe that they won't really kill me?" But she now emphasized to Stephen Colbert that the unrivaled production quality of "Game of Thrones" has to do with scenes like these.
The current reason for Waddingham's talk show appearance is a role in the film "The Fall Guy", a remake of the TV series "A Gun for All Cases" about a stuntman. She plays a film producer alongside Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
Feb