Natalia Lee has been working as an armorer on Game of Thrones since the beginning, and is lately getting her face out in the news in a big way. In an interview with news.com.au, she detailed which Game of Thrones cast members are best at using the weapons she and her team of five make for them, starting with a certain one-handed knight with no family:
"Nikolaj [Coster-Waldau], Jaime Lannister, stands out. He’s very competent. He has a big action film background, he wants to do all his own stunts — he’ll just be a perfectionist."
It must be a nice feather in Coster-Waldau’s cap to be ranked above Kit Harington (Jon Snow), who we’ve probably seen engage in the most combat over the course of the show. Not that Lee doesn’t think highly of Harington:
"Kit was one of top guys there, he’s so nice,” she said. “We’d be in Iceland, balaclavaed up and the actors had to have their faces exposed. I don’t know how they even said the words. He would still thank you every time. There’s so much pressure on these guys, and he’s really talented and committed to what he does."
And of course, Lee can’t talk about fight scenes on Game of Thrones without mentioning Maisie Williams (Arya Stark):
"It was a massive apprenticeship. She sometimes fights with a different hand. Same with Jaime, he lost a hand. Maisie’s so young and she’ll be doing wire work, knife fights."
Like a lot of the people who work on Game of Thrones, Lee has a very cool job. How does one become an armorer, anyway? “When you keep writing your resume and the same sort of skillset keeps coming up you are kind of limited,” she explained to Metro. “You are like, ‘OK, weapons related jobs.’ It feels like you are limited to your skillset.” Before she found her current gig, Lee did everything from security jobs to work in a police armory on a bomb squad. One film seminar later, and she started picking up part-time movie work in her native Australia. One thing led to another, and suddenly Lee had a new career.
"You have to have a broad generalist approach to weaponry. Because you never know if you are going to work as a gunsmith or on “Game Of Thrones” for 8 years in the fantasy genre and with swords. My mishmash of being exposed to different weaponry set me up perfectly for the film industry. You think that 10 or 20 years ago you were just doing it and then suddenly you are being paid for it. You never think that all of your skills will accumulate and snowball to make you do it as a professional."
Moving on to the weapons themselves, Lee seems to be particularly fond of Heartsbane, the Valyrian steel sword owned by House Tarly. “For Heartsbane…I studied biblical paintings. I wanted a classical hunting sort of look. It took me weeks to get that and sketch all of the individual elements.”
"I ran a beautiful arrow down the full length, from the pommel to the cross guard and then flared it out. We then used 3D sketching to create a mold, which we would put in bronze casting. All of that took months. Then we will have variations. We will do rubber variations, we will do rubber variations for fights and for safety in case someone is jumping off a horse. That needs to be meticulously painted to make it look real. Sometimes the research can be horrible, looking at maimed animals from renaissance painting. It isn’t nice looking at dead animals all the time. But a lot of detail goes into it, looking at it from a design point of view and then a historical point of view. Fans can get a lot of it. Because sometimes directors can zoom in on it and that will give you some of the ancestral story of the families."
Lee is clearly proud of creating work that is “becoming a priceless part of TV history.” If she see ones of her creations on auction at Sotheby’s someday, she will be very happy.
As for what she’ll do after Game of Thrones is over, Lee is ready for anything, but she doubts she’ll ever again have the creative freedom she’s had on Thrones.
"I recently did Amazon’s Jack Ryan in Morocco, which is based on a CGI thriller, and it was all modern weaponry. Which meant that it was fixed historically and you had to be very genuine and authentic. Everyone is very particular and specific. [Thrones] is definitely one project where I was able to actually design stuff, concealing daggers in wrist bracelets and stuff like that. We then nudge the directors and creatives to add that in there, so we were able to influence how death scenes unfold. I will definitely never have that scope for creativity."
For even more of Lee’s insights, head here to hear her thoughts on the futility of trying to avoid Game of Thrones in every day life and why the Red Wedding was a lot more fun to shoot that it was to watch. We can’t wait to see what she has in store for the show’s finale come 2019.
Next: How will Game of Thrones season 8 end? Former cast members weigh in
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