Game of Thrones‘ Myrcella Baratheon actress, Nell Tiger Free, looks back on her emotional season 5 death scene and recalls what it was like on set that day. Though HBO’s Game of Thrones came to a close in 2019, it still looms large in pop culture for several reasons. Controversial ending aside, the series was one of the most popular shows of all time during its run, and HBO has shown its desire to keep the world alive through numerous in-development spinoffs. The first, House of the Dragon, is expected to premiere sometime this year.

Over the course of 8 seasons, Game of Thrones featured plenty of shocking death scenes. While the most well-known deaths might go to major characters like Robb Stark (Richard Madden) or Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), even some of the smaller supporting characters can pack a punch when they meet their untimely ends. That includes Free’s Myrcella, the daughter of Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Myrcella dies in Game of Thrones season 5 after being poisoned by Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma).

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Free now stars on the Apple TV+ series Servant. During a recent interview with THR about that show, Free was asked about her Game of Thrones ending and whether she felt the significance of the moment while filming the scene. She needed to convey many things in her short time onscreen, and Free admitted there was pressure there on set. And yet, it ultimately went very smoothly. Free said:

Yeah, there was a lot of gravitas in that episode. I was 15 when I shot that, and there was a lot of pressure. You’re dying on Game of Thrones, and you’ve got to do a good job of it. I was very, very new to the acting world, and it was my first big role as a young woman. I’d done stuff before but as a younger girl. There was this pressure because Nikolaj was very acclaimed and incredibly well-known on the show. So there was a lot of pressure; there’s pressure in every moment. But Nikolaj was such a nice guy. He was so lovely to me when we were shooting that. But to be honest with you, I don’t want to say it was easy, but it was a relatively comfortable scene to shoot. I’d been preparing for it, and it actually went pretty smoothly.

Though fans hadn’t seen much of Myrcella over the course of Game of Thrones, her death still hurt because of the moment she shared with Jaime just before it happened. Up until that moment, Jaime has only been an uncle to the children he fathered with his twin Cersei. However, right before the poison takes hold, Myrcella admits she knows Jaime is her true parent, thus allowing him to actually be a dad for only a handful of seconds. It speaks to both Free and Coster-Waldau’s performances that the audience can feel the weight of their complicated bond even though the two hadn’t worked together much before on Game of Thrones.

It almost feels like to have a death scene on Game of Thrones is a major career achievement. For Free, she’s since moved on to other television shows, yet she still gets asked about her tragic stint as sweet Myrcella Baratheon. Her death might not rank among Game of Thrones‘ best, but there’s no question that it still holds lots of emotion thanks to Free and Coster-Waldau. Myrcella may be long gone in the world of Westeros, but she is certainly not forgotten.

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Source: THR

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Rachel Labonte
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Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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