Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage discuss Cersei and Tyrion’s season 7 journeys

Tyrion and Cersei Lannister haven’t seen each other for a while, and any reunion between the two is likely to be fraught. After all, last we checked, Cersei had put a hit out on Tyrion for the murder of their father and her son (the latter of which he wasn’t guilty of, but try telling her that), and Jaime had sworn to kill Tyrion if he ever saw him again. “He’s returning home, and returning home a new person,” actor Peter Dinklage told Entertainment Weekly. “He has Dany and the dragons on his side but he is a very different person than when he left this place. And he’s returning to a brother he loves and a sister he…dot dot dot.” (Dinklage literally says “dot dot dot” here.) “He’s bracing himself.”

At least Tyrion is on pretty solid footing these day, mental health-wise. “He found purpose,” Dinklage says.

"He was just going to drink himself to death after the end of season 4, then Varys gave him a purpose in life and then in Daenerys he saw somebody he could get behind. That’s what somebody like Tyrion needs — he needs a gig to get behind. Give him a drink and he doesn’t do so well."

It sounds like the show will dig deep in to Tyrion’s situation, as Dinklage says that he worked more days this year than he had in a while, and implies that he’ll be mixing it up with lots of different people. “I love Meereen but it’s good to get out of Meereen because you’re in one story and here you’re in overlapping stories.”

As for what storylines he gets involved in, of course Dinklage isn’t saying, but he does say this is the first time he wasn’t sure if he would live. “The first thing I really do when I get the scripts is I go to the last page of the last episode and then look backward until I find my name to see if I survive,” he said.

He clearly got on that as soon as possible this year, as Lena Headey (Cersei) revealed to TIME. “Last year, Pete Dinklage sent me a text that said “Oh my God, have you read them,” and I hadn’t,” she said. (She’d just had a baby and was understandably indisposed.) “He just said ‘Holy s–t,’ and I was like ‘What the f—?!’ He went, ‘Oh my God, I’m not telling you,’ so I [assumed] oh, I’m going to die.

"And then, I went straight to the end. I was really in shock. I think obviously, now, there’s got to be some body count at the end of [season] 8. This is the year."

Headey isn’t revealing spoilers, either, but does reflect on how Cersei getting crowned queen of the Seven Kingdoms will affect her going forward. “I never saw that coming in a million years,” she said. “It was a great moment. I’m sure getting the seat of power is never comfortable on every level. But she’s aware. She’s aware of all of the s–t, the pain she’s created for everybody.

One of the people Cersei hurt when she blew up the Sept of Baelor was her son Tommen, the king. And if you believe Headey, who really does her homework when it comes to Cersei’s motivations, it wasn’t an entirely unwelcome development.

"With Tommen, obviously, it was not really until last year that we realized the prophecy from the witch about Cersei losing her children and being usurped by a beautiful younger queen. Besides all the stuff that’s haunted her her whole life — her family, her father, her mother’s death, Tyrion, the relationship with Jaime — she’s always believed that she’s going to lose the children she has. And I think when Tommen goes, her last child, it’s almost… a relief for her. Some awful thing hanging over your head and then finally… it happens. This season we’ll see her dealing with her grief."

As for Jaime, Cersei’s last living relation who she can stand, Headey sees their relationship as one with plenty of layers. “Cersei’s always wanted to be him,” she said. “Therefore, for her, that relationship is completion. There’s been an envy, because he was born with privilege just for being a man. I think their love was built on respect. He truly loves her, he’s truly in love with Cersei, but I don’t think her love was pure love, I think it was respect and a kind of need.”

The layered nature of pretty much everything Cersei does is something that greatly appeals to Headey, who names her Walk of Shame in season 5 as a moment she’s especially grateful for, as an actor. Interestingly, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss told her about the Walk of Shame right when she started, so she’d been working toward it for years. That was probably Cersei’s lowest moment, but it still didn’t break her. “I don’t know if I sympathize with her,” Headey said. “I admire her.”

"I love playing Cersei. I’m very intrigued to see what happens to her! She’s so layered, endlessly. Every time you think you know her, there’s another depth of insecurity or fury or resentment or drive or grief. George gave David and Dan the map. And David and Dan and Dave and Bryan write great episodes year after year."

It sounds like all the work Headey has put into Cersei has paid off. In the beginning, many people saw her as just a “self-serving manipulator,” and doubtless there are still people who see her like that. But Headey has worked hard to show fans other sides of the character, to show them “a woman surviving in a really s–tty world desperate to be heard, saying something seven times when a man says it once.” Now, fans who once praised Headey for playing “such a bitch” now “love [Cersei] now and want to be on her team.” Quite a good turnaround.

Next: Greek promo has new footage for Game of Thrones season 7

All told, Game of Thrones has a couple of four-star characters in Cersei and Tyrion. I can’t wait to see the fireworks that go off if they ever meet again.