Celebrity roundup: Natalie Dormer wanders through The Forest, Maisie Williams in Doctor Who
By Dan Selcke
We’re coming up on Halloween, on Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer (Margaery) is getting in on the fun by starring in The Forest, a horror movie about an American woman who travels to Japan in search of her missing twin sister. Her search takes her to the Aokigahara Forest, an actual forest famous for the large number people who have committed suicide there. Here’s the poster:
Well, that can’t be good.
The Forest is an interesting move for Dormer, who in addition to starring in Game of Thrones has been making inroads into Hollywood by starring in the Hunger Games movies. The Forest will be the first time she’s had a leading role in an American production (although she recently headlined The Scandalous Lady W, a British TV movie), but it won’t be her last foray into horror. She’ll also have a prominent role in the upcoming Patient Zero, about a mutated strain of rabies that turns people into a highly intelligent new species (read: zombie movie with a twist).
Until then, check out the trailer for The Forest, in which Dormer is very frightened.
Isn’t it interesting how she traveled to Japan only to get escorted around Aokigahara by what looks to be a hunky American? Life’s funny like that. Anyway, The Forest will be released on January 8, 2016.
Meanwhile, Doctor Who will shortly air two episodes starring Maisie Williams—”The Girl Who Died” (October 17) and “The Woman Who Lived” (October 24). Williams will play a character named Ashildr, and the episodes promise to cover a wide variety of subject material, including Vikings, alien artifacts, 17th-Century England, and those walls you always see in villains’ lairs, the kinds that compress and threaten to crush people. Check out a sample of those in this clip.
The BBC is out in force promoting Williams’ appearance on the show, and even set up a whole webpage dedicated to explaining why she’s a great fit (chemistry with star Peter Capaldi, charisma for days, medieval combat experience culled from Game of Thrones, etc.) Also of interest: apparently it was her performance in Cyberbully, a British TV movie about, um, cyber bullies, that caught the eye of the Doctor Who producers, not her role on Game of Thrones.
Finally, Williams had a few things to say about the potentially world-shattering effects of crossing the Doctor Who and Game of Thrones fandoms. If Williams is ever cast in The Walking Dead, they’ll be no stopping her.
Everything’s coming up Maisie.