Game of Thrones star Carice van Houten (Melisandre) landed her first-ever Emmy nomination this year, for her Guess Actress role in “The Long Night.” Her final bow as the Red Woman literally lit up the screen, and we’ll be pulling for her on September 22.
After the Emmy nominations were revealed — Game of Thrones scored a record 32 for its final season — some noise was made about Van Houten and a few other actors having to “submit themselves” for consideration. That summons up images of Van Houten going down to Emmy headquarters and making a pitch to Bill Emmy himself, but as she explained to The Wrap, it’s not quite like that:
"That’s something that people talk about, submitting yourself. But it’s a team of representatives that come to you, and if they say, “Oh, we want to submit you,” then I’m not gonna say, “Don’t do it.” I said, “Of course, submit me,” but I literally laughed at them when they talked about it. And when it actually happened, I couldn’t believe it."
Regardless of how it happened, Van Houten is now officially nominated. Now it’s up to the voters to decide if her final performance is worth rewarding.
And it was quite a performance. From lighting Dothraki arakhs on fire to stalling the dead with a wall of flame to pointing Arya Stark towards her destiny to crumpling to her death after the battle was over, Melisandre had a busy night. How did Van Houten feel about her character’s exit?
"Even though it was a very limited amount of episodes — in fact, one episode — I was very, very happy with my ending. It gave me goosebumps when I read it, and it was the same when I saw it on screen. I thought it was a very elegant, beautiful ending to a bombastic, dark, violent episode. And I was very flattered that I was the last piano notes of a bombastic symphony."
Melisandre death in The Long NIght Game of Thrones season 8. HBO (screenshot)
Even at the end, there was a lot about Melisandre we didn’t know. In the end, her mystery is part of her power, but it didn’t mean that Van Houten didn’t want to know more specifics. “I really like to figure everything out — that’s mostly how I work, and I ask a load of questions normally,” she recalled. “But in this case, that was really hard. There are books, but I didn’t want to trust in those, so I stuck to the scripts. But every time I wanted to know something about what was going to happen, they couldn’t tell me much. So she was quite a bit of a mystery to me as well. I learned to enjoy not knowing.”
While Van Houten was pleased with the way Melisandre’s story ended, she’s be curious to find out a little more about her past, “but at the same time that’s what made her mysterious, that we only got little slivers of hints.”
"I would have loved to have some sort of little scene with Cersei. I’m so curious what would have happened if those two women got together. That would have been an interesting meeting."
The mind reels at the possibilities.
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