Carice Van Houten talks Melisandre’s anxiety, plus a look into Bran’s perfect world

Something is going to happen with Melisandre at the beginning of Season 6.

I know, everyone thinks that. That’s not news. For heaven’s sake, the title of the first episode is “The Red Woman,” which has always been Davos’ epithet for her in the novels. Clearly, even though the synopsis couldn’t be bothered to mention her, the episode is going to involve Melisandre in a major way.

But there’s having a title, and then there’s the interview with Entertainment Weekly that went up this afternoon.

Now, on the surface, this interview is almost not worth looking at. Everything Van Houten says here is a repeat of something she said elsewhere. She discusses how Melisandre’s decision to burn Shireen alive made the audience hate her, that people promised to forgive her if she brings Jon Snow back, and that the character has been brought low and had her faith shaken by recent events.

It’s nice to play different colors and it’s something I normally do in the roles I play. In my own country, I play roles that are more vulnerable – sympathetic, anxious and doubtful. Melisandre is so the opposite. It was a great challenge for me, but it’s nice to now put my own into it too.

And then…

More to come from our interview with van Houten after the April 24 premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO.

Oh really? What could possibly happen during the season premiere that EW couldn’t risk posting the whole interview beforehand?

Now, although the sheer amount of Liam Cunningham interviews during this preseason run-up suggests that Davos will follow in the footsteps of a long line of actors who hit the interview trail hard before their characters kicked the bucket (Richard Madden, Jack Gleeson, Kit Harington), we don’t think he’ll go at the top of the year, if he goes at all. Cunningham’s been teasing the idea of Davos finding out about what Melisandre did to Shireen pretty hard, so he’ll have to stick around long enough to uncover the truth, at least.

No, it must be something else. We’ll have to wait until April 24 to find out what.

Meanwhile, Isaac Hempstead Wright gave an interview to PhilStar during a visit to Singapore. The actor, who turns 17 tomorrow, is now six feet tall, a far cry from when he started the series. (“The last time people saw me, I was three feet smaller,” he said.) I look forward to seeing how the Game of Thrones crew tries to make him look like he’s still a young kid in Season 6.

Time waits for no Stark.

Like Wright, Bran has done a lot of growing. He spent the year between Seasons 4 and 5 training with the Three-Eyed Raven, and when we reunite with him in Season 6, he’ll have made quite a lot of progress. “So, when we meet Bran in Season 6, he’s not quite (at home) with his talent yet,” Wright said. “But he’s got an idea of what his power is, and what it might be useful for.” Wright thinks that Bran now has “a firm grasp of what his role is within the world,” and it doesn’t include sitting on that Iron Throne everyone’s always fighting over.

"I don’t think Bran should necessarily rule and I think he’d be perfect to be someone who enables someone else to rule, like a magic sage, who could advise and counsel. More than anything else, (I’d like him to) be some mother-nature kind of character, controls all the trees and keeps balance in the world."

And like many fans, Wright hasn’t given up hope for a Stark reunion.

"It would be nice if we could all get together, a Stark government… That would be fair. That would be something new. I’d like to see Sansa Stark on the throne actually. That would really be cool. Why? Because she’s been exposed to so much politics, been through horrendous stuff herself, she’s already thick-skinned and has a cunning mind, which is exactly what you need to be a leader. So, I think Sansa could be queen."

Something tells me the show isn’t yet done making the Starks miserable, but there’s a first time for everything.