Curtain Call: Sibel Kekilli
When it came to deaths, Season 4 was relentless, and the finale was no exception. And so we say goodbye to Sibel Kekilli, the actress who has portrayed Shae since season 1.
From the beginning, Kekilli had a major challenge set before her in playing the camp follower-turned-lover of a Hand. Her character was a significant change from Tyrion’s teenage lover introduced in the first book, a girl not given much depth and personality of her own beyond charm and greed. Readers of the A Song of Ice and Fire series knew Tyrion Lannister would fall in love with Shae, but that in the end, she would point the finger at him when he stood trial for Joffrey’s murder. Testifying against the popular Tyrion and sleeping with his father doomed her in the eyes of the fans.
But the books aren’t the show, as we’re often reminded, and a funny thing happened when Sibel Kekilli came along. As David Benioff told The Hollywood Reporter, “[W]e knew our Shae would diverge from book Shae the moment we saw Sibel Kekilli audition. Sibel brought such life and intelligence to the part; her intensity inspired us to make the character more complex.”
Even George R.R. Martin has come to prefer her Shae to his own. Sibel created a challenging new character, one so genuine in her fearless love for Tyrion, and sincere in her friendship with Sansa, that even the smuggest readers of the books were no longer certain of the trial to come and the final confrontations. You couldn’t easily summarize or dismiss this Shae.
In a fictional world where many of us so often see what’s coming, Kekilli brought the gift of unpredictability, and I’m grateful for that.
Ultimately, Shae met her fate at her ex-lover’s hands, in a fierce fight for her life with a spirit that the book’s version never graced us with. Sibel has been just as fierce in her post-GoT interviews, defending Shae’s perspective with frankness and intelligence. She understands these characters, Shae and Tyrion both, and loves them. She gets it.
As for the actress’s future, Kekilli’s already back to work, filming new episodes of the long-running German-language crime series Tatort, in which she’s played policewoman Sarah Brandt since 2010.
Her time on Game of Thrones has ended but the impression Sibel Kekilli left is indelible.
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