“Worst day of my life”: the 2016 scene that gave Hannah Waddingham a bad case of chronic claustrophobia
Prior to landing her role on Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham was best known for her memorable performance on one of the biggest HBO shows ever.
Among the most fascinating phenomena of the contemporary streaming era has been the overwhelming success of Ted Lasso, which became the series that essentially saved Apple TV from falling behind in competition with other services. Although it dumped a tremendous amount of money into financing ambitious science fiction shows like Invasion, Silo, and Dark Matter, the streamer found its biggest hit in an old-fashioned sports comedy that was based on a sketch character.
Ted Lasso didn’t reinvent the wheel, but its straightforward, empathetic depiction of its characters appealed to audiences, especially given that it debuted in the summer of 2020, at a time when negativity had seemingly swept the globe, offering a reason to feel optimistic.
While it was Jason Sudeikis’ portrayal of the titular character that first hooked viewers, the show created a breakout star in Hannah Waddingham, who was by no means unknown, as she’d spent years as a working actor before this, and expressed interest in doing more film roles. Perhaps her most memorable gig previously was in Game of Thrones, in which she portrayed the sinister religious zealot Septa Unella.
Unella had been introduced in the fifth season as one of the followers of Jonathan Pryce’s High Sparrow. While initially the faithful are used by Cersei, played by Lena Headey, to take down her political rivals in the Tyrell family, she eventually becomes at their mercy, and is stripped naked and paraded through the street in a walk of shame.
There was no one who tormented Cersei more than Unella, and the most dangerous Game of Thrones character wasn’t ever going to go without revenge, so in the stunning finale of the sixth season, ‘The Winds of Winter’, Cersei orchestrates a plot to destroy the High Sparrow, his family, and all the Tyrells who plotted against her. Although Unella is not among those killed in the attack, Cersei later chains her up and subjects her to extensive torture, and according to Waddingham, it was the most difficult scene that she had ever filmed.
“I’m strapped to a table with all these leather straps,” she admitted to The Guardian, “I couldn’t lift up my head because it would be too obvious that it was loose. I had grape juice all in my hair, so it went purple. I couldn’t speak because The Mountain had his hand over my mouth while I was screaming, and I had strap marks all over me like I’d been attacked.”
Game of Thrones has frequently attracted criticism for its graphic violence, but Unella seemed like a character so cruel that she would even cause viewers to have some sympathy for Cersei. But once their roles are flipped in a scenario where the latter has all the power, Unella’s fate of unimaginable torment becomes one of the most effective instances of brutality in the entire series, and a sequence that left the actor suffering from a bad case of what she called “chronic claustrophobia.”
Thankfully for Waddingham, she managed to exit the main cast before the final two seasons, which took a downward dive in quality and became known for the biggest finale disappointment in television history. Still, her recollection of the 2016 episode remains no less vivid, since she called it “the worst day of my life.”
