It’s been months since the series finale of Game of Thrones, and cast and crew members are still weighing in on the backlash that followed the final group of episodes. Fans had complaints about a lot of things, including the way the show killed off Missandei, Daenerys Targaryen’s loyal right-hand woman. “I did really anticipate that people weren’t going to be happy about [Missandei’s storyline],” star Nathalie Emmanuel recently told the Daily News. “It’s kind of inevitable with the fact that she’s the only woman of color on the show and also [a] very kind of beloved character … Like she’s hurt nobody, really. So she’s the least deserving of that treatment.”
All the same, Emmanuel is defending the show from some of the more aggressive attacks, taking particular issue with the infamous petition calling for the final season to be rewritten. “People are allowed to not like the show, that was never up for debate,” Emmanuel said. “You either like it or you don’t. I heard that a lot of people liked it, I heard a lot of people didn’t like it. And, you know, that’s fine … I didn’t particularly enjoy the fact that people were like signing a petition to have it remade. And I kind of don’t really think you get to ask an artist to change their art after the fact.”
By way of a disclaimer, I’ll say that, according to the man who started the petition, it was more about expressing frustration than actually affecting change — of course HBO isn’t actually going to remake the final season. But that is what the petition asks for on its face, and I completely get why actors like Emmanuel or Sophie Turner would take umbrage with it, both as people who worked very hard on the final season and as artists in general.
All that said, Emmanuel — who seems like a very agreeable person — is willing to see where the dissatisfied fans are coming from, and admits that, sure, she would have liked to see a few of the storylines fleshed out a bit more:
"The completion of those storylines maybe could have had more time. I think people are allowed to tell the story that they want to tell. But I guess in some characters I’m a fan of and I’m like, ‘Oh, I wish we had more time with them.’ You know?"
Yes, we know. But before we take this as evidence that Emmnauel hated the season or whatever, she was quick to qualify. “But that was just probably me being selfish,” she laughed.
She also put the whole endeavor into context:
"What they did in the time that they had, for me, was like a massive, massive achievement and incredible thing that they achieved on-screen. For television, it was like nothing that’s ever been made."
I love how Emmanuel is trying to see all sides of the argument — I’m like that a lot of the time.
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