As the final season of Game of Thrones inches closer, the cast has been reflecting back on what the series has meant to them. Lena Headey recently spoke to The Daily Beast about saying goodbye to her fierce and relentless Cersei Lannister, and to the series as a whole.
She literally bid goodbye to several of her fellow cast and crewmates — over 2,500 of them — at the Game of Thrones wrap party, which included such former cast members as Sean Bean (Ned Stark) and Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo) among the attendees. “Everyone was there,” Headey remembers. “[T]he dead awakened and drank a lot of booze.”
Indeed, the Game of Thrones cast was a fun-loving bunch on set, too. “We fuck around more than anyone will ever know,” she says. “I’m always saying, ‘Can we not do one comedy take?’ And David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] are just like, ‘No! We don’t have the time!’ If we did a comedy version of Thrones we’d have enough for two series. We’re such a bunch of eejits, it’s the funniest thing.”
If only there was a comedy version of Game of Thrones, less “shame, shame, shame” and more “dance, dance, dance.” We can dream…
But while there was plenty of fun and games, Cersei is ultimately a pretty serious character, and Headey found a way to channel her. Part of that is Cersei’s little turnip wig, which Headey has gone on record as hating. “That makes me very angry, so that helps when they put [the wig] on at 6 a.m. and I’m like, fuck.” But the better part is good old-fashioned preparation and talent:
I do this thing before a take where I just have to have a little minute of getting to the place where I’m immersed in it myself, and I believe everything I’m about to say because there’s nothing I find more uncomfortable as an audience than I don’t believe you. I have to buy into who she is, and that takes a little minute of reassessing everything and blocking out everything else.
Headey has adored playing this brutal and often frightening character, but she’s also ready to say goodbye. There’s a world outside of Westeros (we’re pretty sure, anyway) and she’s ready to shine in other places. After all, she can play more than angry, manipulative and borderline crazy, fun as all those things are.
With Cersei, it’s been eight years, so that character is big in people’s minds, and now it’s over. That tiny TV show. People sort of forget the work previous, which is a very different thing. It’s part of the next life. I appreciate all that success, and if it brings with it the fact that people think that’s it, I’m very happy to show them differently.
Headey may well go on to different things, and we’re excited to see them — her new movie, Fighting With My Family, opens on Thursday — but she’ll always be Cersei in our hearts. Who can forget the Destruction of the Great Sept of Baelor?
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