Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage reflect on the Lannisters’ longevity

Lena Headey is still on her promotional tour for Pride + Prejudice + Zombies, which opens stateside February 8th. A period film that is a mash up of horror, humor and costume drama, Headey’s character, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is Elizabeth Bennett’s major nemesis by the end of the story, a fact one can tell from her costume. She’s wearing an eyepatch.

In her latest interview, with New York Daily News, she reveals that though she was famously pregnant during the filming of last season’s “Walk of Shame” on Game of Thrones, that wasn’t the only set she found herself filming on while pregnant. She was also with child while shooting Pride + Prejudice + Zombies, originally filmed in late 2014/early 2015, though not to the point that they couldn’t hide it. Headey wonders if her daughter picked up a few things during the shoot.

It was the early days of my pregnancy and I felt absolutely hideous every day. Maybe all this zombie-killing will be in her DNA someday.

As for herself, Headey thinks the Hollywood life has been a trip so far. “It’s an interesting trajectory for a woman. I played the young ‘Oh, I love him’ (ingénue). Now, because I’m a tough old hag, I get to play all the tough old bitches. In terms of Hollywood, anything over 40, it’s, ‘Surely she can only play a grandma.’ But I’m also not afraid of that.”

According to her, the biggest blessing of her career has been being cast as Cersei Lannister, which has led to a variety of other roles in the last five years, usually one that involves her standing over corpses plotting.

I’m so f—–g lucky to be able to grow with Cersei. The fact that they haven’t killed me is a miracle … I guess the moment I’m dead on ‘Thrones,’ you’ll never want to speak to me again.

If Headey really thinks that, then she hasn’t been paying much attention. Perhaps it’s due to the sheer amount of cast members that have been killed off over the years, but sometimes it seems like there are more interviews about Game of Thrones with actors and actresses who have been killed off than there are with those who are still on the show. The latter, after all, are afraid of accidentally giving away spoilers. The dead, on the other hand, can’t talk about what’s to come.

Meanwhile, in other Lannister news, the Hindustan Times has some quotes from Peter Dinklage, who contemplated the place of dwarves in Hollywood. “Maybe I’m biased because sometimes I see people of my size- how they are represented in fantasies – it is always very comical,” he said. “I feel like as if there is some code book that they have to follow when they’re shooting a fantasy, but with our show, that line is very unclear.”

It’s easy to imagine how someone like Dinklage could get typecast in Hollywood, and it’s terrific to see that his performance on Game of Thrones has put the focus on his talent rather than his size. When he played Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past, for example, no one said a word about his size. He was just one of the movie’s antagonists.

After it’s done so much for him, Dinklage has grown attached to Tyrion, and indeed to the Lannisters in general. “A lot of these characters, they come and go,” he said. “The Lannisters though, they’re survivors.” That’s putting a positive spin on it.