Small Council: Who was the best actress from Game of Thrones Season 6?

We’ve talked about the best actors from Game of Thrones Season 6. Now let’s award the best actresses, many of whom have already been honored with award season nominations, if not wins. Who stood out to us this year? (We also did polls on the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.)

DAN: I want to use this opportunity to eulogize Margaery Tyrell, whom Natalie Dormer brought vividly to life for five seasons on Game of Thrones. Dormer didn’t give the flashiest performance of Season 6—actually, she didn’t give the flashiest performance of any season, and that was the point. As Cersei and Daenerys, Lena Headey and Emilia Clarke got plenty of opportunities over the years to chew scenery, but Game of Thrones always played it subtle when it came to Margaery. Maybe that was because it was right for the character. Maybe it was because the producers knew that subtle was what Dormer did best. Most likely, it was a little of both.

Take the scene from “The Broken Man” where Margaery bids goodbye to her grandmother. This is after the High Sparrow has released Margaery from beneath the Sept of Baelor, purportedly because she’s converted to his uniquely zealous brand of religion. We suspect she’s faking it, but we can’t be sure. Dormer is hard at work on multiple levels as she urges Olenna to leave King’s Landing. Margaery is performing for the nearby Septa Unella, playing the converted penitent. She’s also performing for her grandmother, trying to say just enough to convince her to leave without letting Unella know that she’s not fully on board the High Sparrow’s crazy train. And Dormer is performing for us, as we try to figure out where Margaery’s head is.

The other obvious example of this sort of multi-tiered acting is the scene from “Dark Wings, Dark Words” where Margaery cozies up to Joffrey. As in “The Broken Man,” Dormer is playing Margaery, who is herself playing a character. Dormer lets us in on the secret, but not so blatantly that Joffrey suspects anything. These sorts of scenes take tact, timing and intelligence, things both Margaery and Dormer have in good supply.

Another benefit of playing it subtle: when you play it straight, it has more impact. Margaery is very practiced at hiding her emotions, but she cracks just a little bit when she hugs Olenna goodbye. Because we almost never see what Margaery is really feeling, this honest display of affection is powerful. That’s doubly true in retrospect, after we see what happens in the finale.

Had Margaery lived, I have no doubt she would have kept being subtle, and probably would have reclaimed power from the High Sparrow slowly but surely during her reign. Unfortunately, her long game was cut short by Cersei’s short one, and we lost a great character and great actress both.

SARAH: I was torn between three actresses, but Dan—that sly fox—took Natalie Dormer, and Sophie Turner belongs to Katie, who understands Sansa better than anyone on this planet save George R.R. Martin. I’m going to go with the actress who stole my heart in Season 1, the instant she snuck away from her needlework to show off her archery skills. Maisie Williams took a bow then, and she deserves to take another now. Her performance is, and always has been, instinctive and natural. The character of Arya Stark feels like it grew from somewhere within her.

As much as I love Arya and Maisie both, I can consider Arya’s storylines objectively and admit that they have been lacking in flavor since she left Sandor Clegane to die at the bottom of that mountain. Williams works best when she’s got a sparring partner, and Braavos was sadly lacking in Joe Dempsies and Rory McCanns. Arya’s only friend, Tom Wlaschiha’s Jaqen H’ghar, wasn’t really her friend at all. His claim that Arya could offer any name she liked to the Many-Faced God was nothing but the work of an accomplished catfisher, and his enigmatic, sexy personality was discarded somewhere in the Narrow Sea. So imagine my delight when the theater rolled into town, bringing Lady Crane with it.

We really got to see Williams exercise those acting chops of hers in the second half of the season. Much like Natalie Dormer’s Margaery, Williams is an actress who has been playing an actress. Unlike Margaery, that kind of deception doesn’t come naturally to Arya Stark. From the moment Arya first encounters the players at work, she is hanging on to that deception by a thread, and Williams plays it beautifully. As Lady Crane herself notes, Arya has expressive eyes, and with those eyes she allows us entry to Arya’s thoughts and feelings without needing to be explicit. When she couldn’t surrender Needle in Season 5, it was Jon she couldn’t give up. When she gave Lady Crane advice about how to play Cersei, she was telling us of her own heartache, and of the family she left behind. When she wondered aloud what was west of Westeros, we saw the barely suppressed hope of a very lonely girl who had finally made another friend. Aside from the moments where Arya’s pain manifests in violence, most of what she feels is shimmering just below the surface.

Arya is a character who wears her heart on her sleeve, but she’s also so afraid to confront her own grief that she swallows it whole. Trying to find a balance between outbursts of emotion and oppressive denial is a tough job for any actor, but Williams handles it like a pro. In my opinion, her Emmy nomination was six years of excellent work in the making. A girl is something very special indeed.

KATIE: First, allow me to thank Dan and Sarah for leaving me to do what I do best. Because call me Captain Obvious, but Sophie Turner takes the best actress cake. Turner is a powerhouse throughout Season 6. If you ask me, she’s been a powerhouse throughout the series. But it’s perhaps more obvious this time around, because Sansa wields that power in a way she hasn’t before.

This year, we saw beyond Sansa’s grief to the anger that simmers beneath. Turner plays that anger so coolly, it’s borderline poetic. She seethes with a frightening sort of calm, and proves that Sansa is ever the controlled, noble lady—but now, she’s a queen in her own right, too. After years of studying the playing board, Sansa steps on it, and Turner is up to the challenge. She balances her character’s rage with reason, and gives Sansa a steady hand. That demeanor is especially recognizable to survivors of abuse—I myself have become well-practiced in that kind of self-control, as it’s necessary to overcome and move on.

Sansa had her fair share of grand speeches this season. While they very well could have come across as flowery or overwrought, Turner turned them into triumphs. She ruled over the quaking Littlefinger and doomed Ramsay. Sansa has overcome every obstacle in her way so far, and her speeches to her former captors, and even to Jon, show that she won’t be taken advantage of any longer. It was so gratifying to watch Turner’s performance as Sansa dispassionately leaves Ramsay behind while he’s ripped apart by his dogs. Indeed, one of Turner’s assets is her mastery of the detached, unmerciful look. When she told Ramsay that he was “going to die tomorrow,” he would have done well to hightail it out of the North.

Turner tackles her role with aplomb and sophistication, and seems well beyond her years as an actress. On a personal note, I would like to thank her for the unyielding steel with which she plays the part. The writing is a true testament to real-life survivors of abuse, and Turner carries that burden respectfully and realistically. I have never seen her like, and Season 6 made me even more eager to see Turner in new roles as her career continues to take off.

COREY: I’ll go a bit off the wall and choose Carice Van Houten’s depiction of Melisandre as my favorite female performance of Season 6. She hid her emotions in the middle of the season when she wore that “I am the Lord’s chosen instrument” face, but at the start and end of the year, Van Houten was burning as bright as the fires of her mythical Lord of Light.

I’ve mentally blocked out the scene from “The Red Woman” where Melisandre removes her choker to reveal a shriveled old crone, but Van Houten’s rendering of Melisandre’s sudden loss of faith following Stannis’ defeat is very powerful. Here is a woman who has literally fought for hundreds of years for a cause she believed in only to have her certainty ripped away in an instant. It’s a stunning scene that makes you wish Van Houten had been allowed to do more than smirk and glare her way through her first four seasons on the show.

The second scene that stood out to me was Melisandre’s confrontation with Davos Seaworth (played by Liam Cunningham, my pick for Best Actor). Van Houten imbues Melisandre’s defense with equal parts pain and shame, and made us empathize with Melisandre despite her terrible crimes committed in the name of something she believed in passionately. This confrontation brings back Melisandre’s pain from the beginning of the season, and Van Houten makes sure we feel it.

It’s hard to elicit sympathy for a character that many fans basically hated in her first four seasons, but Van Houten pulls it off in this scene. She might not be the obvious pick, but anyone who can make this stone heart feel something will always get my attention.

ANI: Welp. I guess that leaves me the only other obvious choice: Lena Headey as Cersei, who has been nominated across the board for her work this year, including an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Pro-tip, though: if she doesn’t show, you should probably consider listening to Natalie Dormer when she says, “We all need to leave now.”

Kidding aside, this was Headey’s year, and that’s taking into consideration that Season 5 featured her Walk of Shame. After all, having someone else walk through the streets of King’s Landing for you so they can CGI your face on her is one thing. It’s the aftermath—living with the humiliation, and knowing that your enemies think you down and out, that’s the harder cross to bear.

What was the moment when the die was cast, when the choice was made, when the fate of those in the Sept was sealed? Headey’s performance didn’t give away what was coming in the finale, even after Olenna asked her, point blank, “What are you going to do dear, kill them all yourselves?” (#WellActually.)

Headey’s performance was the one I remember most clearly from Season 6. After all, it’s not every day that you get a performance so good that another actress can get accolades for playing you across the Narrow Sea.