Fans will be dissecting the ending of Game of Thrones for a long while now, but now the cast is free to do the same with no more fears about spoilers, and no more future contract negotiations to consider.
Lena Headey, who essayed the character of Cersei Lannister, is among those who weren’t too pleased about how things ended for our favorite incestuous queen. And it’s not because of those wigs! In a new Guardian interview, Headey discusses the death of her character.
“I will say I wanted a better death,” she admitted. “Obviously you dream of your death. You could go in any way on that show. So I was kind of gutted. But I just think they couldn’t have pleased everyone. No matter what they did, I think there was going to be some big comedown from the climb.” Cersei and her brother-lover, Jaime Lannister, were crushed to death by Red Keep masonry, as opposed to, uh, being stabbed in their stomachs and quickly bleeding to death.
“Obviously you dream of your death,” she said, having seen the multitude of torturous ways her co-stars had been killed off in seasons past. “You could go in any way on that show. So I was kind of gutted. But I just think they couldn’t have pleased everyone. No matter what they did, I think there was going to be some big comedown from the climb.”
Headey confirmed that she’s “got a few of [her] own gripes,” but hasn’t “sat down drunkenly” with the show’s creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss yet, who adapted George R. R. Martin’s unfinished epic for HBO. We would love to be a fly on the wall for when that happens.
Cersei’s death was one of many missteps in the last few episodes of the iconic series and part of a larger issue of how the show treated its female characters. Since the series ended last month, there have been countless debates about the character assassination of Daenerys Targaryen as well.
In the end, both Daenerys and Cersei deserved better.
Have more to add to the story? Comment below and stay tuned for more updates!
