Game of Thrones actor opens up about Missandei’s controversial death

Actress Nathalie Emmanuel recently opened up about the controversial death of her long-running “Game of Thrones” character Missandei, saying the powerful reaction it sparked calls for a greater discussion about diversity on TV.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight (ET), Emmanuel said she’s glad her character’s death has sparked such a large response, calling attention to the “wider issue of representation.”

Missandei, one of two characters of color with speaking roles on ‘Game of Thrones,’ was cruelly killed during the final season of the show on the season-eight episode “The Last of the Starks.” Some viewers especially took issue with how Missandei died, accusing the show of having “racist overtones” because it featured a white character cruelly killing the only woman of color on the show while she was in chains.

Emmanuel said she respects the series’ showrunners and is “grateful” for how Missandei left the show, explaining that she felt her character went “with strength and with agency.” And although the actress said she expected a strong reaction to her character’s death, she didn’t anticipate one quite like this.

“When you have the token characters — I don’t think they tokenize us in the usual sense — but when you have one or two characters, people who are used to being othered or of a minority background, [viewers] will look for the closest thing to them and I think so many people are so rooting and invested in those two characters,” the actress told ET. “And then specifically women and women of color [identified with] Missandei, so I expected the reaction to that, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the size of the reaction.”

The actress said she “was kind of excited” that her character’s death sparked conversations about diversity on TV shows, adding that this is something “we can learn from going forward” when it comes to casting, particularly in the fantasy genre.

“If you try to cast as inclusively as possible, when the only one goes or is no longer in the show, there’s not so much of a heartbreak, because you feel represented throughout, as opposed to by just one person,” Emmanuel told ET.

Emmanuel is not the only “Game of Thrones” star to address controversy from the show’s last season. Previously, actors including Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and Conleth Hill (Varys) have also talked about criticism of the series finale at Comic-Con.