Closing any chapter in your life can be emotional, but that’s especially true when it’s the chapter that changed everything. And Game of Thrones did just that for Gwendoline Christie.
Before she was cast as Brienne of Tarth, Christie had appeared in a few shows and movies, but it was the HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s novels that made her a household name. It led to bigger roles, other franchises and award nominations.
So, when she took off Brienne’s costume for the final time earlier this year, Christie wept. A lot. According to an interview the actress did with the Evening Standard, she cried for two hours after she finished filming and took off the armour.
“It truly was the most incredible thing that happened to me,” she said of the role. A role that was unconventional in all the right ways.
The Evening Standard writes:
The triumph of Brienne of Tarth was, she says, both professional and personal. “I know how generic it sounds but it just was, in every sense of the word, incredible that that part should come along, made for me in a way that none of my friends would’ve identified for a second. They saw all of the fighting, the physicality, the fact that it was a character who was constantly being described as ugly. None of the people who knew me could understand why I would want to play that part.” When the book of Christie is finally written, this will be her Damascene moment. “I had to cut my hair, change my body, strip off my make-up. This is not the person I have presented to the world at all.” She graduated, in that moment, to the woman she always wanted to become.
But ultimately that vulnerability is what made Christie’s performance so good, and it’s what made Brienne so memorable. And now, the actress is a massive star.
Game of Thrones returns next year.
[h/t Winter is Coming]