Missandei has been with Daenerys Targaryen since season 3, her most faithful servant and a trusted friend. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, actor Nathalie Emmanuel talked about what’s in store for Missandei in season 8, and what playing the character has meant to her.
Emmanuel was struggling as an actor when she got the call she had secured the role of Missandei in 2013. When it came, she was walking home from the grocery store. “I dropped everything, screaming,” she remembered. “I broke a jam jar on the pavement. It was all very exciting and emotional.”
When it came to character work it was kind of difficult. Because in the books [by George RR Martin], Missandei is only nine years old. She is described as a very quiet, very still person. Kind of timid. But I didn’t really want that for her. I thought: ‘She has survived so much, so much horror, but underneath there’s this impenetrable strength’…So at first, I created a person who was very contained. Then I got to play with the subtleties of her coming out of that, and having more freedom to think and feel.
In time, Emmanuel put her stamp on the character, and pretty soon Missandei was an important part of the wider ensemble, growing along with the series’ popularity. “The first couple of seasons were so brutal to the women,” Emmanuel said. “But I believe those storylines were deliberate so that, when they came into their power, we’d celebrate them more because we have seen the suffering they have endured. Every woman, anywhere, can relate to that.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – JANUARY 29: Nathalie Emmanuel attends a VIP performance of ‘La Bohème’ at London Coliseum on January 29, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)
As for what will happen to Missandei in season 8….well, Emmanuel said what she could, which isn’t much: “I think it is very safe to say that the war is here for Daenerys, and Missandei marches right beside her, all the way.” We’d expect no less.
She got a little more detailed about the wrap party in Belfast:
It was really, really fun. We had Pete Tong DJ. Snow Patrol performed. It was crazy. Afterwards, a lot of the cast went back to Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff]’s house. We were there all night. When the sun came up, everyone was sitting outside. It was just really emotional, the fact that we all sat together at the start of a new day. I thought: ‘This is the end.’
Finally, there’s what comes next. Emmanuel already has a lead role in an upcoming Hulu series based on Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the fame brought to her by Game of Thrones. “People do recognize me now, but I think it depends on how I am dressed and whether I have my hair out or not!” she said. “It is a bit weird.. you kind of dissociate yourself from it because that is not really my life. I still jump on the Tube every day to yoga.”
For me [fame] can be a little intimidating. I don’t know how much I want it. People are mostly really warm and respectful, but sometimes they are not and I struggle with it. People taking pictures of you on the Tube or following you. That is kind of scary.
In other news, tomorrow, CBS is airing a special all-Thrones episode of 60 Minutes, with CNN’s Anderson Cooper visiting the season 8 set. Check out a preview, where Kit Harington (Jon Snow) walks Cooper through the show’s prop warehouse:
The final season of Game of Thrones airs tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. CST on HBO!
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