Carice van Houten on the Game of Thrones finale: “The silliness of it was very smart”

Carice van Houten may not have won an Emmy for her work as Melisandre in the final season of Game of Thrones, but it still looked like she had a blast at the ceremony. The lot of the cast rang out the end of the show in style.

"[NO SPOILERS] The GoT cast at the Emmy Awards from gameofthrones"

She also talked about her time on the show to The Hollywood Reporter, taking us behind the iconic scene where Melisandre resurrects Jon Snow. The hardest thing about the scene for van Houten? Speaking the lines in High Valyrian. “It was so hard,” she said. “I mean, Emilia (Clarke) had it way worse than me, of course, but I remember learning those lines. There’s no reference whatsoever. It’s like, ‘Am I talking Hebrew? Greek? What is this language?’ But it was fun because I also felt like if I made a mistake, nobody will notice.”

"The whole revival, the resurrection of Jon Snow, I improvised the shit out of that. Nobody saw it. I mean, I’m sure there’s a few people that said, ‘I knew what you were saying was wrong.’ I’m sorry. But, you know, it was a tricky time. It was a long day, and I just didn’t know my lines."

Could’ve fooled me:

She also gave her take on the divisive series finale. I…think she compliments it? “I just love the fact that the whole throne was blown away,” she said. “The whole thing was gone. I really loved it, and also the randomness of talking about who’s going to be king. The silliness of it was very smart. I thought, ‘This is what life is. Some dumbo can become president.”

"That’s the world we live in. We just sort of go, ‘Uh, that guy.’ It was smart that it was just sort of silly. I really liked it, to be honest."

Okay, so maybe the fans who came down on the slapped-together scene where Bran is picked as king weren’t looking at it the right way. Sure, over half the people on the council either didn’t know who he was or had no reason to vote for him, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe the scene is actually a carefully crafted indictment of the chaos and randomness of the electoral process.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

As for what’s next for van Houten, she’s currently talking up her thriller Instinct, where she plays a psychologist who gets involved with a patient. “What really drew me in was that [my character is] not immediately a very sympathetic character,” she said. “She’s not a happy-go-lucky girl next door, tongue in cheek kind of character that I’ve played in Holland a lot, in fact. But enough people know me from Game of Thrones, but the stuff I’ve done before is much more light, I’d say.”

I’ll just be over here trying to picture Carice van Houten in a “light” role. It could take a while.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels