Natalie Dormer on Margaery’s “good heart” and her not having “a f***ing clue” what she’s doing

Natalie Dormer is still is still on the press trail for horror movie The Forest, and still dropping quote after quote about Game of Thrones Season 6 along the way. In a recent interview with The Irish Times, she talked a little about becoming a fan of the show while watching the first season (“When Sean Bean had his head chopped off, I was as surprised as anyone.”) before sounding off on the complexity of Margaery’s character.

"She’s a sincere human being. She genuinely has a good heart. Being politically savvy doesn’t make you a bad person. But I think that when women are portrayed that way, that’s how it often seems. Women have to strive in the public eye. But that doesn’t make them bad people."

The role of women on film was a big topic of conversation when Dormer stopped by Tipsy Talk, which is like a normal talk show, but both the host and the guests knock back drinks while they talk. Dormer speaks eloquently, even after a few belts of champagne, about the need for “proportional representation in our storytelling” and avoiding stereotypes when writing female characters. “You don’t need to write about having babies. You don’t need to write about shoes…Could you not, and not hit those stereotypes?” She’s all for flipping the genders of characters (“change the John to Jane”), and rattles off a nifty list of female characters that could have been men without much change. “I think we know we’ve really made it when it’s almost gender irrelevance.”

It’s a fun, loose watch. The talk about women in film starts around 6:36. Discussion about Game of Thrones, of which there is plenty, starts around 5:11.

On to the Game of Thrones talk, Dormer reinforces what she’s been saying about Margaery for a while: that Season 6 will see her brought low.

"She’s not in silk skirts at the moment. I went from rolling around in the mud and the grime in The Forest to rolling around in the mud and the grime in a dungeon in Westeros. And it’s also fun to see Margaery a little bit out of control. That’s fun as an actor…it’s great to play someone who hasn’t gotten a f***ing clue what they’re gonna do."

BEGIN GAME OF THRONES SEASON 6 SPOILERS

We’ve known for a while that Margaery will indeed be released from her cell under the Sept of Baelor sometime in Season 6, but Dormer seems to have been giving mixed messages about how it’ll come about. Around four months ago, she implied that Margaery would work her usual magic to talk, act, and charm her way out of her predicament, but hearing her say that Margaery doesn’t have “a f***ing clue” what she’s going to do makes it sound like she’s on shakier ground.

Then again, maybe she was just excited that she got to swear. Interestingly, in the books, Margaery is released almost as an afterthought—it’s mentioned that she’s been sprung from her cell in the final chapter of A Dance with Dragons. Since Margaery is a bigger presence on the show than in the books, the producers probably wanted to show a bit more of her struggle.