Game of Thrones vets star in medieval comedies, spy dramas and more
By Dan Selcke
Game of Thrones stars are getting new gigs left and right, starting with Bella Ramsey, who GoT fans will remember as the indomitable Lyanna Mormont, starring in an adaptation of the medieval YA novel Catherine, Called Birdy, about a spirited 14-year-old living in the English village of Stonebridge in the year 1290.
Ramsey’s character is arranged to marry a much older man as part of an alliance, which is very Game of Thrones of her, but that doesn’t fit with her modern sensibilities. “Her recklessness and joy and passion doesn’t fit with the societal role she’s been assigned,” Ramsey told Teen Vogue. “[The film] is about her fighting these customs with justified rage and humor and open-mindedness. She’s basically trying to forge her own path in a world stacked against her in that regard.”
That’s something Ramsey has touched on in a lot of her acting work. “All these girls have the odds stacked against them,” she said of the various characters she’s played. “They all are living kind of lives that they’re forced to live. Lyanna Mormont obviously being the leader of this big island and all these men, she didn’t choose that. Same with Birdy, she didn’t choose to be the future lady of the manor, and Ellie [from the upcoming HBO series The Last of Us] didn’t choose to grow up in a post apocalyptic world. They all try and make the most of the circumstances they were put into and born into.”
Catherine, Called Birdy is written and directed by Lena Dunham. It will be in theaters on September 23 and stream on Amazon Prime Video on October 7.
Michelle Fairley, Pilou Asbæk and Charles Dance all get new gigs
Ramsey is far from the only Game of Thrones cast member tearing it up in show business. Variety reports that Michelle Fairley, who played the tragic Catelyn Stark, will star in the upcoming film Nobody Has to Know. She’ll play Millie MacPherson, a caretaker who is looking over a middle-aged man suffering from memory loss after a stroke. Millie tells Philippe that they were secretly in love with each other before his memory started to go…which isn’t true.
Why does she tell this lie? I’ll guess we’ll have to wait until the movie is released in the U.K. and Ireland later this year to find out.
Moving along, The Hollywood Reporter has it that Pilou Asbæk (Euron Greyjoy) will appear in the Danish period drama Befrielsen (roughly translated to Liberation). He’ll play a school headmaster living in Denmark during an influx of German refugees in 1945. The refugees are put in internment camps, and Asbæk’s character has to decide whether to help them or support his country’s anti-German stance.
Befrielsen will be out in Denmark on September 23 of this year.
Finally, The Wrap reports that Charles Dance, aka Tywin Lannister, is joining Kiefer Sutherland in the Paramount+ series Rabbit Hole, about an operative in the world of corporate espionage who is framed for murder.
Sutherland plays the main guy. We don’t know who Dance will play, but we do know that pretty much whatever he’s in is better because he’s there.
The eight-episode Rabbit Hole will premiere on Paramount+ later this year.
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