S15
T HE ENVELOPE LOS ANGELES TIMES THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2019L
ONDON— Like her character
on “Game of Thrones,” Gwen-
doline Christie believes in tak-
ing matters into her own hands.
The actress, 40, submitted her-
self as a contender for the 2019 Emmys and
landed a supporting actress nomination
for her work as Ser Brienne of Tarth.
“It’s something I find hard to do, like ev-
eryone else, but I would like to be in charge
of my own destiny,” Christie says. “And I
would like to endeavor to give myself op-
portunities. Particularly when working
very hard on something very special and
you’ve pushed yourself beyond your limits.
“I checked that it wasn’t an inappropri-
ate thing to do, and I was told it wasn’t.
People submit themselves all the time. I
truly never expected it to manifest in a
nomination and I don’t think anybody else
did either. But I just had to do it for me.
And I had to do it as a testament to the
character and what I feel she represents.”
For Christie, who is starring in a pro-
duction of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
at London’s Bridge Theatre, the conclu-
sion of the beloved HBO series handed her
character what Christie considers a happy
ending. The final episode brought the re-
cently knighted Brienne back around to
what she wanted from the very beginning:
to be a member of the Kingsguard.
“I could not believe that I made it all the
way through,” the actress says of her char-
acter’s survival with a laugh. “And I was in
the end of the final episode. Brienne makes
it through and has a life beyond. I found
that incredibly positive and unexpected.
And she gets a great last line.” (“I think we
can all agree that ships take precedence
over brothels.”)
Christie felt a strong connection with
Brienne since before she was even cast on
the show in Season 2. The actress was socompelled to get the role that she spent
eight weeks preparing for her audition,
binge-reading three of George R.R. Mar-
tin’s books and training to get physically
fit. She spent hours perfecting Brienne’s
stride while working as a dog walker. The
actress was driven because she couldn’t
believe this character could exist on TV.
“I knew that emotionally I could iden-
tify with the character, but where the work
had to go was into the differences, which
was all of the physical elements and all of
the physical strength,” Christie says. “I was
very scared to go near my androgyny, my
masculinity and my physical strength —
and the strength with which I felt some of
my own opinions, especially some of my
opinions about women.
“It was the opportunity to do something
I knew I needed to do, which was to under-
go a change and undergo a transformation
and get in touch with who I truly was and
how I’ve been made physically and who I
am as a person.”
After joining the cast, Christie quickly
became aware that she wasn’t the only per-son obsessed with Brienne. Fans gravi-
tated to the character, a noble warrior
committed to her duty and to doing what
was right. With her grand stature and an-
drogynous sensibility, she didn’t fit into the
narrow bounds of women on TV. “I don’t
know what plans [the writers] ever had for
that character, but I was shocked by how
embraced the character was by the audi-
ence,” the actress notes. “I didn’t think
that’s what audiences wanted, because
we’ve been told that’s not what audiences
want.”
The understanding of Brienne as a
strong, unconventional woman might ex-
plain some of the backlash to the final sea-
son, when the character beds Jaime Lan-
nister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the first
person to congratulate Christie on her
nomination) after the Battle of Winterfell.
Some fans were upset that Brienne reveals
raw vulnerability when Jaime leaves, but
Christie feels it’s important to see a woman
in all her colors.
“When you’re about to lose something
that has truly meant something to you, itcan destroy you, and I don’t think there’s
any weakness in that,” Christie reflects.
“What I liked was that happens, but then
she goes back to work. She doesn’t follow
him, does she? She stays with Sansa and
she does her duty. And she did get her
happy ending, and her happy ending
wasn’t defined by a man. What completes
her as a character and what makes her
three dimensional as a character is the fact
that she becomes open about her feelings.”
Christie, who will appear in Armando
Iannucci’s upcoming film, “The Personal
History of David Copperfield,” which will
premiere at the Toronto International
Film Festival in September, is particularly
pleased by her Emmy nod because of what
it says about how pop culture is evolving.
“I wanted the possibility of being recog-
nized for everything that character repre-
sents, for what she’s meant to me and for
the part I feel she’s played, in some small
way, in the burgeoning landscape we have
in entertainment of seeing women in a dif-
ferent way,” she says. “A more realistic way
and a more unconventional way.”“I JUSThad to do it for me,” says Gwendoline Christie of nominating herself for an Emmy, ultimately snaring a nod.Matthew LloydFor The TimesTHE CONTENDERSA TRUE
KNIGHT
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By Emily ZemlerTHE ENVELOPE