Natalie Dormer on Margaery in Season 5: “She Loses Control”

Margaery Tyrell is one of the most improved characters from page to screen in Game of Thrones. This is partly because of the way she is written in A Song of Ice and Fire. A character with no personal POV who has been well trained by her grandmother Lady Olenna, she never gives away what she is thinking, even in scenes where she’s having one on one conversations. Instead we see her as others project upon her–Sansa sees a friend, whereas Cersei sees a conniving enemy. Dormer’s portrayal of Margaery gives her a totally different aspect–someone who Sansa could see as a friend and Cersei could see as a conniving enemy, but one who is herself struggling to put what she was taught by her grandmother into practice. Margaery is navigating choppy waters, where everyone is an enemy and one wrong step could cost her head.

Or worse, her control over the situation. And according to Dormer’s interview in the New York Daily News, by season’s end, she will have lost just that.

“The game of chess ramps up to a whole new level with dire consequences for both, Margaery and Cersei,” says Dormer…. “Toward the end of the season she loses utter control,” says Dormer. “It’s really fun to see Margaery finally, really out of control. It’s taken four years but she finally loses it.”

Dormer is quite protective of Margaery’s reputation when pushed on her scheming. “She’s not a bad person — just a political animal, and when you’re in as deep as the Tyrells are now, you’re either going to sink or swim. It’s a long way down now. There’s no other thing to do other than climb up.”

That’s very true. In the books, characters are constantly saying that Margaery is being pushed into these political marriages, but in the show, Margaery makes it clear she is fully complicit in wanting to become “The Queen.” Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to her that her grandmother has lived as long as she has because she never aspired that far. But though Margaery wants to be “The Queen,” there is a level where she knows that playing the Game means that if she loses, not only will she face consequences, but so will her entire family.

“She’s not maliciously, coldly, indifferently jumping from one man to another. Margaery is trying to keep something really bad from happening to her or her family,” Dormer says. “She’s trying to keep them all treading water, and Cersei is out to get her. It’s fight or be eaten. She genuinely cares about Tommen; she has a good heart.”

That good heart–that’s the thing that was never clear about the character in the books. Whether or not caring for Tommen–especially when facing down his mother over his affections–will do her any good in the end is another question.

• Published on 04/08/2015 at 8:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:05 PM CDT