Nathalie Emmanuel on Missandei’s transition from slave to “career woman”

Between appearing in Game of Thrones season 7 and The Fate of the Furious, Nathalie Emmanuel is in for an eventful 2017. She recently appeared on KFM Breakfast, a radio show in Cape Town, South Africa, to talk about those projects, her life, and how Missandei has developed.

Emmanuel started at the beginning: with her audition for Thrones. Although it wasn’t that long ago, the show wasn’t nearly as much of a thing back then as it is now. “When I auditioned for Game of Thrones, I was like [a] hardcore fan, was fully invested in seasons 1 and 2,” she said. “And I feel like, you know, only a really small percentage of people knew of the show. It was usually people that had read the books. It was like a very niche thing. And it’s amazing to see how sort of universal it’s become, and so many more people watch it. And you’ve got the show fans versus the book fans. It’s all like a thing. And it’s great!

"To be a part of that show has been such a blessing, and it definitely opened up doors for me, because people wanted to talk about it when I went into auditions and it broke the ice straight away. That was the one thing that I really used to struggle with going into auditions. Now they would be like ‘Oh, I love the show!’, ‘I really like this’, and you know. So it’s automatically helped me in my auditioning cause I get to feel relaxed in the room, because people want to talk about this thing that I’m excited about too. Off the back of that, it definitely put me in vision of the producers or of the writers of the Fast and Furious franchise."

Being on a hugely successful TV show will do that for you.

Weirdly enough, no one on KFM Breakfast asked Emmanuel about what’s coming in season 7 — usually interviews can’t stop asking those questions. The closest Emmanuel came to revealing anything was when she ruminated on the big question every Game of Thrones cast member must continually ask herself: Is this the year I die? “To be honest, I think because of the show’s history — and the books’ as well, if you’ve read them — I think everyone sort of has this ‘I’m probably gonna die’ thing,” she said. “And I think that I had that too, from the beginning. And the fact that we’ve got season 7 coming out it’s insane. And I’m still there! It’s like ‘okay, no one’s noticed I’m here, maybe.’ They’d be like ‘oh yeah, she’s here! We should kill her!’

"The thing is, when I auditioned for that part, it was really sort of vague in terms of the commitment. They were like ‘three to five episodes, maybe future seasons.’…So, for me, the fact that that character has grown and become so a part of the show and a part of Daenerys’ journey — it’s been such a joy and a blessing…To get to develop a character over a number of seasons, for any actor, is so fulfilling. It’s really fun playing Missandei and seeing her come from indoctrinated slave to freethinking, free-feeling, official career woman."

We can see more of Emmanuel when Game of Thrones season 7 premieres on July 16.