Hannah Waddingham is getting a lot of buzz lately for her role on Ted Lasso on Apple TV+, but Game of Thrones fans will always remember her as Septa Unella, aka the Shame Nun who walked behind Cersei Lannister during her naked march through King’s Landing ringing a bell and yelling “shame” over and over.
It was a small part with a big impact, and it might not have happened had Waddingham not turned up to the casting call despite feeling she wasn’t right for the part. She told Yahoo Entertainment that she showed up expecting to be rejected but wanting to get her face in front of producers in case they had another part later that she might be a good fit for. But it didn’t go that way.
“I was nearly eight and a half months pregnant, like pregnant from the cheekbones out, you know, when your face joins in, in the last month!” Waddingham said. “I walked in, and honestly, I genuinely thought I was in the wrong place. Because all the women were like, 70-odd, about five foot two and about 20 foot wide. I was like: ‘Right. I appreciate that I’m pregnant at the moment but I’m definitely in the wrong casting.’”
It sounds like the producers were looking for actors who resembled Unella as described in George R.R. Martin’s books, where she’s said to be stout and sturdy. The tall, long-limbed Waddingham doesn’t quite match that description, but the producers saw something they liked in her audition. “Apparently I’d been put in as the wild card,” Waddingham continued. “So when I went in for the meeting, and met [showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], and I was a bit like: ‘Hello. I don’t really know why I’m here and I know nothing about Game of Thrones. And I’m so pregnant, I might have an accident right here!”
The key moment came during the audition when Waddingham accidentally hit a casting assistant on the leg with a wooden ladle. “In the middle of the tape, when I’m meant to be really nasty, I went: ‘Oh my god, darling. Are you all right?’ And when I came back for my recall, David Benioff and Dan Weiss just went: ‘That made us laugh so much. It was like this menacing person who’s going to kill someone, and then you turned into Joanna Lumley!’”
Joanna Lumley, for reference, is the actor who played the hilarious and depraved Patsy Stone on the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. Clearly it worked for Waddingham, because casting director Nina Gold “came chasing out after me” and offered her the job.
Things were just as frantic on set for Game of Thrones season 5, where Waddingham brought her infant daughter. “And so my daughter was eight weeks old when I went out there with my friend and had the really embarrassing moment of being in my wimple and nun’s habit. And I could hear my daughter crying, like, offstage, behind the building for that first part of the walk of shame. And I thought, oh my god, I’m going to start lactating through my [clothes]… but thankfully not!”
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
Hannah Waddingham (again) clarifies comments about Game of Thrones waterboarding scene
Waddingham also addressed a media narrative that’s grown up around her concerning a scene she filmed with Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister) at the end of the show’s sixth season: when Cersei tortures Unella by strapping her to a table and pouring wine in her face.
“I was at David Benioff’s birthday, and we were all discussing that because recently, it’s been spoken about in the press that I said that I was waterboarded for 10 hours and it was the worst day of my life other than childbirth,” Waddingham said. “What I actually said was, it was next to childbirth, but I would 100% do it again. Because you know that they’re not actually going to kill you.”
And it makes amazing television. Was it massively uncomfortable, and easily the worst day other than my gruelling childbirth ? Yes. And I don’t care who knows it. And they all know it.
I feel like this narrative is just about winding down, but who knows? If Waddingham wins that Emmy it could go on for a while!
Outside of Game of Thrones, you can see Hannah Waddingham on Ted Lasso, which is airing its second season on Apple TV+ right now!
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