Natalia Tena recalls when she knew her Game of Thrones character was dying

Game of Thrones had a sprawling cast of dozens of characters; there are the big ones that everyone remembers — your Jon Snows, your Daenerys Targaryens, your Tyrion Lannisters — but also a network of supporting characters that filled out the cast.

That included Osha, a wildling who ended up becoming a member of the Stark family household. Played by Natalia Tena, Osha featured in the first few seasons of the show before being written off in the third and finally brought back in the sixth, where she died.

“I was in my twenties when I did Osha,” Tena told Inverse. “I was doing gigs in my band on Friday and Saturday nights. Inevitably on Sunday, I’d be hungover. My hair in a mess. When it was winter I had this vintage fur coat. That’s when I get most recognized. You go to the pub for a Bloody Mary and it’s like, ‘Are you the Wildling?’ When I looked ragged, basically.”

Natalie Tena on her journey from Game of Thrones to John Wick 4

After a couple years off, Tena was naturally psyched to come back to the show in season 6, when she and young Rickon Stark (Art Parkinson) were captured by the vile Ramsay Bolton, who was then trying to consolidate power in the North. But she caught on pretty quickly that Osha wasn’t long for this world.

“I was so excited in Season 6 when they brought me back,” Tena said. “I’d been out for two or three seasons. They were like, ‘Don’t worry, she’s gonna come back’” Tena had worked with Ramsey on another project before, but when she saw how few scenes she had with him and others, she knew her time was up. “I’m only working with him for two weeks. That’s when I clocked, ‘They’re definitely killing me off.’ Because I only had my scenes with him, and it’s very little to build on. So I was like, ‘Okay, I’m dying.’”

It was pretty clear watching at the time that Game of Thrones brought back both Osha and Rickon just to kill them off (Rickon didn’t even have a line the entire season). “I would have loved to make it to the end,” Tena says. “I wish as well that me and Art [Parkinson, who played Rickon] could have joined up with Bran and the other wildlings with Hodor. Because we split off, and it would have been great to come back together.”

Happily, Tena landed on her feet. You can see her this weekend in John Wick: Chapter 4 as Katia Jovanovich, John adoptive sister and the head of a Russian Romani syndicate of assassins.

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