Natalie Dormer Talks Margaery In Game of Thrones Season 6
By Ani Bundel
For the past few years, I’ve had a theory about pre-Game of Thrones season interviews.
It started in Season 3, when I had started blogging about Game of Thrones far more on my own blog. As a book reader, I had a *very* good idea of what the producers were saying in interviews when they told us that Season 3 would encompass “the first half of A Storm of Swords.” I all but knew that episode nine would be the one with the Red Wedding. With that foreknowledge, it was amusing to me that every time I turned around, there was another interview with Richard Madden, talking up Robb Stark’s development as a leader, and being the romantic hero, and his relationship with Talisa versus the one he understood his character has with Jeyne Westerling in the novels. It was misdirection, the equivalent of putting Sean Bean’s face on the side of a bus.
But that was nothing on Season 4. Knowing that Joffrey couldn’t possibly survive more than four episodes, it seemed almost gratuitous how front and center he was in the trailers, and it was odd that Jack Gleeson was doing two interviews to every one given by every other cast member. And then last year, Kit Harington was first out of the gate in January, and every time you turned around, there he was again, talking about his character’s arc this season and about how big the season was, and how amazing this certain battle scene (which turned out to be the Massacre at Hardhome) would be.
So it’s been with great interest that I find myself once again writing up yet another interview with Natalie Dormer. Now, unlike say, Gleeson or Madden, Dormer is “technically” pushing her new movie The Forest. (Kit Harington was technically pushing the UK release of Spooks: The Greater Good this time last year.) But like Harington, Dormer seems almost uninterested in her project, and happy to do nothing but talk about Game of Thrones Season 6. Speaking to the RadioTimes in an interview published this morning, she reels the spoiler train from yesterday’s interview back in and focuses on her own character’s journey.
In season six — when we finally get there at the end of April — what you see with Margaery is that the reigns have been taken away from her. So it’s like she’s not in charge of her destiny any more. And if she’s not in charge of her destiny how does she reclaim that power you see her wield for the first few years?
She hastens to add she is not the only Tyrell whose life of ease and power has been upended. Her brother Loras is actually in a worse position. He is the one who committed the moral sin against the seven. Margaery merely got caught in the cover up.
To see the Tyrells in that kind of jeopardy, to see them incarcerated like that and how they deal with that, I do think it’s a very interesting arc for them this season. It really shakes it up, King’s Landing has been completely shaken up this season.
Now, one could say this is merely a coincidence of timing. Over an eight-week span, Dormer attended two different premieres in the two countries where Game of Thrones is hugely popular (The US and the UK), and that’s why she seems to be everywhere right now, talking about the upcoming season twice as much as everyone else. But for those looking for a conspiracy theory confirming which major character won’t make it to the end, I present this to you for consideration.