GAME OF WEDDINGS
Game of Thrones actress part of updated Four Weddings and a Funeral
GOT’s Nathalie Emmanuel is enjoying her new role on Four Weddings and a Funeral,
Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for Game of Thrones.
During six seasons as Missandei, confidante to the dragon queen Daenerys on Game of
Thrones, Nathalie Emmanuel had a lot of time to consider what she wanted next; a job that was shooting closer to home in London. The chance to play an American. And most of all, a part with more responsibility, preferably a leading role.
Then a script for Four Wed
dings and a Funeral, Hulu’s reimagining of the 1994 Mike Newell-Richard Curtis hit, materialized — almost as if she had willed it out of thin air.
“As soon as I heard that Mindy Kaling was involved, I was like, ‘Hell yeah, let me go in for this,’ ” Emmanuel said. “I’d sort of manifested it in different ways. And all of those things wrapped up into one beautiful little rom-com bundle.”
If Four Weddings were a literal translation of the original, Emmanuel would be the Hugh Grant character, a quippy British commitment-phobe bumblingly pursuing an elusive love (Andie MacDowell).
But it’s far more an homage, less white and upper-middleclass. And Emmanuel’s Maya, an American political speech writer, harbours a terminal attraction to inappropriate men. That includes the potential Mr. Right (Nikesh Patel) she meets-cute after arriving in London for her best friend’s wedding — only to discover later that he’s the groom.
In 1999, at 10, Emmanuel took the stage as Young Nala in the original West End production of The Lion King and, seven years later, was playing a teenage drug addict and prostitute in the soap opera Hollyoaks. But her career stalled. While working in a Hollister store she saw a casting call for a nonwhite female in Game of Thrones.
Already a fan, she told her agent, repeatedly, that the role was meant for her.
Even before she had set foot on set, “people that had been slightly snobby about the fact that I had only done soap and hadn’t really done a traditional training suddenly were like, ‘Hey, we’ve got this part you might be right for,’ ” she recalled. “I didn’t necessarily get them, but at least I got to throw my hat in the ring.”
Emmanuel, now 30, did land the hacker Ramsey in the Fast
& Furious franchise and is currently shooting her third instalment. She’s also voicing Deet in the Netflix series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson fantasy debuting on Aug. 30. Calling from Los Angeles, she chatted about her own commitment issues and willing her destiny into being.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation. What’s it like being on a Mindy Kaling set?
Oh, it’s great fun. She was such a brilliant collaborator. She’s got a clear vision for what she wants and she knows how to articulate it in a way that people know what to do. I think she really demonstrated what it means to be a leader and her energy breathed through this whole thing. It’s so wonderful, especially from my perspective as a woman of colour, to see somebody doing it and being such a badass about it. Mindy has called Four Weddings and a Funeral “one of the first perfect romantic comedies.” And yet she wanted to update it to represent the world she lived in.
It’s such a joy to be part of an inclusive, diverse cast and tell their stories in a way that is quite lightly done. It’s not necessarily about the fact that they are of colour or women or LGBTQ or Muslim. It doesn’t focus on our differences, it focuses on our similarities. And that is really important in this time where people are so intent on being divided and spreading hate. About Game of Thrones: some people had a problem with the way Missandei was killed: beheaded in chains. What are your thoughts?
To be honest with you, I read every season going, ‘They’re going to kill her this year.’ And they didn’t. So the fact that she got to where she did as the very kind, loyal, sweet soul that she was was kind of a miracle — because those people don’t tend to survive in Game of
Thrones. And eventually that fate found her, too, but I was very proud of how strong and ferocious she was. She was dedicated to her queen and, in that very final moment, she showed so much agency and ferocity in a way that we hadn’t necessarily seen from her. And Daenerys’s plunge into extreme violence?
I think it made sense. They had seeded that for quite a long time, her sort of relentless brutality. She lost all of the people she loved and it was just too much. And I would have loved her to have not gone and killed everybody because I genuinely believe that Daenerys wanted to be the change that she wanted to see in the world. It was sad that she couldn’t do it. But I definitely felt like Missandei’s death was the straw that broke the camel’s back at the end of the day. What do you make of the disgruntled fans and the petition going around?
I’ll be honest: I was disappointed that there was a petition. The idea that people were demanding things or even accusing the writers of being incompetent when they basically had you hooked for a whole decade of your life is ridiculous to me. I was left feeling hopeful, sort of like the beginnings of democracy in Westeros. Maybe I’m biased, but I genuinely thought that the final season was a masterpiece.
You’ve been cast as a lead, alongside Taron Egerton and Anya Taylor-Joy, in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. How did that happen?
Well, that was another thing that I really manifested into my life because I wanted to do more voice-over work. Then within a really short period of time I did a (Henry James) radio play for the BBC in England. And very shortly after that a friend called saying, “There’s a part,” and I remembered the movie and thought that was really cool. I love Deet, she’s so cute. She’s like our little heroine but doesn’t quite know it at the beginning.
What’s it like voicing a puppet?
It was a huge challenge because they’ve shot the puppets already so syncing your voice to somebody else’s performance is really quite tough. I was so blown away by Deet as a puppet and her performance before I even recorded a single sentence. The puppeteer, Beccy Henderson, is a very talented actress from Belfast, and it inspired me to reach out and congratulate her and just tell her how great she did. We like to call ourselves Team Deet. And now you’re shooting Fast & Furious 9 in London. Now there’s a franchise with inclusivity.
Fast & Furious has been doing that for 20 years and they were doing it before anybody else wanted them to do it. They showed me at 11, 12 years old that people like us could do it. It was groundbreaking. And I loved the fact that I was a part of that message.
As a child, you played Young Nala in The Lion King. What did you think when you attended the movie’s European premiere?
Oh my God, it was so good. Yeah, that was the beginning for me when I knew that’s what I wanted to do. You also channelled Mel B at the Spice World tour. Were they significant to you?
Absolutely. The Spice Girls might have been the first album that I bought on tape with my pocket money that I saved up. I didn’t realize how much of a fan I was until they stepped out onstage and then I could not stop screaming.
What’s on your wish list next?
I’m so ready to play a superhero, I can’t even tell you.