Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei): Game of Thrones showrunners are “legends”
By Ariba Bhuvad
Many fans had less-than-favorable reactions to the final season of Game of Thrones. It is known. The cast and crew, who worked their butts off to make the last six episodes, aren’t having it. That includes Nathalie Emmanuel, aka our beloved Missandei of Naath.
Speaking to TV Line, Emmanuel talked about the infamous fan petition to “remake” the final season of the show. “Listen, I think it’s totally fine if you don’t like something,” she said. “That’s perfectly acceptable. What I didn’t like was that people were signing a petition. You can’t ask for receipts on art. You just can’t. The art has been created for you, and you can either choose to like it or not.”
Agreed. None of us have to love Game of Thrones season 8, but there’s a difference between that and stomping all over the hard work that was put into the project, in particular as regards showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. “I think people forget they made people hang on to their literally every word for 10 years,” Emmanuel told Entertainment Tonight. “And to me, that makes them legends.”
As Emmanuel put it, the final season was “a hard plane to land…I don’t think people quite realize the undertaking and the amount of manpower it took to do that.” For her part, she was “blown away” by the conclusion. She also had some laudatory things to say about the brutal way her own character went out.
"I was very grateful for the strength that she had when she left. That was a performance choice for me. I was like, ‘She’s not going to be crying. She’s not going to be stereotypically scared. She’s scared, but she owns it. This woman survived slavery. She knew that she might go to war and die. And she’s owning it like a badass bitch. And I felt like that’s what I did. I was very proud of it."
It’s hard to argue with that. That scene was some of Emmanuel’s best work on the show.
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You can next see Emmanuel in something completely different in the Four Weddings and Funeral show on Hulu. No beheadings there…probably.
Next. Take the Black Podcast: Which new show can become “the next Game of Thrones”?. dark
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h/t NME