The Small Council: Who was the best actress from Game of Thrones Season 5?

Last week, we debated which male actor gave the best performance during Game of Thrones Season 5. This week, we’ll talk about the actresses. Who should take home the (entirely metaphorical) acting crown? Read our arguments below, and sound off in our poll!

CAMERON: As usual, I’m torn between two of my favorites on the show. Season 5 was a crucible of sorts for Daenerys, as the consequences of her decisions finally started to bring her down from her ivory tower. She’s forced to make compromises and unflattering decisions that force her into becoming something to the Meereenese she didn’t want to become: an unworthy ruler. I still think this journey makes more sense in the books (tied as it is to Dany’s coming-of-age story, which is absent here for various reasons), but Emilia Clarke continues to refine Daenerys’ moods, from conquering dragon queen to a frightened little girl staring up at a giant dragon whom she once called her child. It was probably Clarke’s best season since the first.

And then there’s Cersei. I think by now everyone is in awe of Lena Headey’s performances, but this year especially, she had a worthy opponent in Jonathan Pryce. Watching these two unveil themselves to each other was one of the greater tragic tales of the season, and, well, no one does it better than Lena Headey. It’s just the truth. Cersei’s Walk was as hard to watch as it was to read; Headey made sure we’d never forget it.

DAN: When discussing the best actresses of Game of Thrones Season 5, Lena Headey’s name immediately comes to mind, and with good reason. But while I’m fully in agreement that Headey absolutely smashed Cersei’s walk of shame scene, I kept wanting more fire from her during the rest of the year.

This may have been a side-effect of having read the books first, as there’s a ton going on in Cersei’s head during A Feast for Crows that I was hoping to see reflected in Headey’s performance. She did a great job with Cersei’s percolating anger and misplaced confidence, but I wanted more of her paranoia and incompetence. So with all due respect to Lena Headey—and there’s a lot of respect due Lena Headey—I’m going to lobby for Maisie Williams to take home the gold on this one.

After seasons spent fruitlessly trying to get to one place or another, Season 5 let Arya slow down and consider her next steps. It allowed her the chance to get introspective, something she’d rarely had time for, and the scene in “High Sparrow” where she can’t bring herself to throw away Needle is one of the most quietly heartbreaking moments of the year. Arya’s eyes well up to the edge of tears, she stares off into the distance, and all the memories of her happy life in Winterfell wash over her. Williams uses her instincts, charisma, and craft to make sure the audience is right there with her.

Williams also did a great job of taking us along on Arya’s emotional journey as she tried to subsume her fiery personality on her way to becoming “no one.” She was convincing as Lana the seafood salesman in “Hardhome,” but I think we all knew that the transformation wasn’t permanent, and it wasn’t. In “Mother’s Mercy,” Lana turned back into Arya and ripped her old nemesis Meryn Trant to shreds, and Maisie Williams deserves a lot of credit for making it look believable for a little girl to completely dominate a much larger man. Williams had always been good at conveying emotions through body language, but the intensity of her physical performance in this scene was new.

These scenes revealed new dimensions to Arya and uncovered yet more of Maisie Williams’ talents. They were the highlights of a banner year for her.

KATIE: I’m always impressed by the younger actors on the show. While they’re not as seasoned as the actors portraying their parents, guardians, or tormentors, the young’uns still pack some major punches. Among them is my pick for the week (and my pick for the throne), Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark.

Turner stole my heart way back in Season 1 when she played a dreamy-eyed girl with fairytale ambition, and she’s kept it all the way to this point, when she’s a determined young woman who finds strength in her family name and in herself. She’s a survivor, and by now she knows it. I’ve always been drawn to Sansa’s story because it parallels my own experiences with love, idealism, self-discovery, and strength, and I am constantly in awe of how accurately and poignantly Turner is able to portray that. Her tone always hits the right mark, always sending the message that the dialogue alone could not. Her facial expressions are subtle, because she knows how to wear a mask while her character plays the game. The producers provide Turner with the right words, but it’s Turner herself who moves me to tears and cheers alike. And as much as I’d like to go into depth about what she’s done this season, that would require an analysis of every one of her scenes, so to sum it up I’ll just that say she nails it every time.

I’m always interested in the outside projects the Thrones actors pursue, but it’s Turner’s career I’m following. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but her performance has spoken to me in a big way all along, and I think she’ll resonate the same way with any project she tackles. I look forward to see where she rises outside of Westeros as well as in it.

RAZOR: While it’s certainly easy to go with one of the powerhouse actresses mentioned above, I found that I was mostly drawn to the acting of Kerry Ingram (Shireen Baratheon) this season. Perhaps it was the fact that the writers knew how, when, and where she would die in Season 5, but they seemed to really focus on her scenes. Each time Kerry was in the spotlight, she brought home the feelings that needed to be conveyed.

Her touching and tender moment with Stannis—my heart broke for a girl not loved by her mother and kept at arm’s length by her father—where he affirmed his love for her and told her the measures he took to save her life, was wonderful. When Shireen flew to his arms to hug him, seemingly for the first time, it brought tears to my eyes.

Then there were her scenes with the supporting cast. Shireen’s interactions with Gilly and Sam were interesting, but her bond with Ser Davos Seaworth is what shattered my resolve into a million pieces. The look of complete desperation and utter sadness on Davos’ face after he learned of Shireen’s fate was more than I could bear. From her asking Davos about seeing the crypts of Winterfell, to her telling him the story of the Dance of Dragons, Kerry Ingram knocked these scenes out of the park.

And then there was her horrifying death. I’ve had my problems with Season 5’s writing, but the showrunners’ decisions to cut away during both Sansa’s rape and Shireen’s burning were some of the best choices they ever made on this show. If I allow myself to think back on it, Shireen’s screams still haunt me to this day.

Shireen’s death was set in motion earlier in the episode, when she and her father had yet another tender moment…but there was something amiss with Stannis, and it set off alarm bells in my brain. Kerry’s performance as Shireen chose to blindly trust her father’s soldiers as they led her to the place of her sacrifice, before finally asking “Where is my father,” really began to make me squirm in my seat. When she saw Melisandre standing by an unlit pyre, Ingram displayed facial expressions and acting techniques that just cannot be taught. Then there was her pleading, which melted the ice around her mother’s heart and eventually caused her to commit suicide, and her final screams.

Kerry Ingram deserves the award for best actress of Season 5. Because of her performance, I still fast-forward her death scene when rewatching…it’s that realistic.

ANI: There’s only one answer for me: Diana Rigg.

It probably feels a little off the wall, since Rigg was only in a couple episodes this season, but every time she stepped on the screen, it crackled. Her showdown with Cersei, in which she discovered you cannot actually win a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent because they are simply too incapable to understand they’ve been bested, was fantastic. Not only did it remind us of how much King’s Landing and Cersei lost when Tywin was killed, but it also reminded us how much Olenna lost. She’s increasingly the oldest person in Kings Landing by generations, as she survives round after round of the game. But even as she wins, she loses her equals, antagonists though they were. In a world of Cerseis instead of a world of Tywins, Olenna is quite alone, and Rigg made us feel that in her frustration.

Then there was her scene with Littlefinger, surrounded by broken clay dildos as she took the pieces she still had on the board and played her best moves with them as she could. But even there, though we could feel her calm satisfaction in revenge, there was a twinge of sadness too. This was only tit for tat. It did not free her grandchildren.

No, the true creme de la creme scene for Rigg this season was when she came up against the only man equal to her in King’s Landing: the High Sparrow. And Rigg’s performance as a woman who is used to playing the game hard and winning was something to behold as she slammed directly into a wall. The High Sparrow isn’t playing the game she knows. He’s playing a completely different one. Here she was with all her pieces: money, power, prestige. And this was a board in which all those pieces are mere pawns. The High Sparrow needs none of these things, nor is he impressed by them. In his eyes, she is the old game, and he is the new. I thought watching Rigg win in Season 4 as Olenna took down Joffrey was delicious. I had no one idea how great her performance would be in losing.

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• Published on 08/21/2015 at 11:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 08/21/2015 at 11:10 AM CDT