Gwendoline Christie Talks Brienne of Tarth With Net-A-Porter
We may think of Gwendoline Christie as the rough and tough Maid of Tarth: masculine, ungainly and not interested in women’s fashions, thank you very much. But Gwendoline Christie, who plays the role, couldn’t be further from her character. She may be 6’3″, but that doesn’t stop her from wearing couture. She’s currently dating a big name designer in the London fashion scene (Giles Deacon.) She sat down with fashion website Net-A-Porter for an interview where they asked her about the Game of Thrones character that made her famous.
In Christie’s words, Brienne of Tarth is “a noble misfit.” When she sat down with George R.R. Martin after getting cast, he told her the story arc Jaime Lannister “was conceived as Beauty and the Beast with gender roles reversed.” Christie said “we talked for a long time about Brienne because he had, as he put it, ‘the advantage of being able to shine a torch around her mind’.”
That’s a pretty interesting comparison, considering that Martin’s first big TV hit before he sat down to write A Song of Ice and Fire was, in fact Beauty and the Beast. I certainly had not thought of the story that way.
When Christie’s name initially came up for Brienne of Tarth, I heard fans say she was too pretty, though Christie didn’t experience it that way. When she heard that fans were lobbying for her at all, she saw it as “this wonderfully encouraging wave of support. I read the books and I really, really wanted to play the part. I started kundalini yoga, kickboxing and running, and completely changed my diet. I felt I wanted to undergo what was necessary for the part.” That’s some determination, since it was all before she had her first audition. But as she put it: “I love a challenge, and I love defying limitation, gender stereotypes and people’s expectations of me as an actress.”
Above we have Christie in a dress designed by boyfriend Giles. It struck me when I saw this picture how much like it looks like the dress we saw Emilia Clarke in as Dany during the Osuna filming. Though she’s branching out into other franchises like Star Wars and The Hunger Games (she’ll be in Mockingjay: Part 2 next year), she’s still dressing right now to recall her current production.
According to the Net-A-Porter interview, that’s not a bad thing, since Brienne has fans in high places. “Barack Obama is reported to have asked the show’s producers after her character’s well-being [after the season 4 finale], and Mike Tyson once accosted her on the red carpet for a joint selfie (with the stipulation that she put him in a headlock.)”.
For more of the interview, plus a fashion-centric video of Christie, check out Net-A-Porter.
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