Isn’t it astonishing how an iconic role can catapult an actress into the limelight, only for her to seemingly vanish like a needle in a haystack afterward? Such is the case with Natalie Dormer, who rose to prominence playing Margaery Tyrell, a shrewd noblewoman on Game of Thrones.
However, in the explosive finale of Season 6—a highlight that left fans reeling—Dormer’s charismatic queen meets a fiery end, ejecting the actress from the Game of Thrones roster.
But Dormer did face her share of qualms, such as the particularly awkward sequence where she had to seduce the boy-king Tommen Baratheon. Isn’t it ironic that the actress had previously seduced Brad Pitt’s character in The Counselor without any regrets?
The Game of Thrones Plot Twist That Frustrated Natalie Dormer
Natalie Dormer, the queen of complexity of HBO’s Game of Thrones, certainly knows how to make a splash. And surviving in the cutthroat world of David Benioff & D. B. Weiss’ series requires a sharp mind and a silver tongue, qualities Dormer brought to life with finesse.
However, even the most formidable queens have their quibbles. One particular storyline in the show gave Dormer quite a royal headache. There was a sequence where Margaery was expected to seduce Tommen Baratheon, a scene that left Dormer feeling less than regal.
The actress didn’t mince words (via The Daily Beast):
That scene was altered because I phoned Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] and said, ‘I’m not comfortable doing this’. It’s the nature of the beast that I’m four years into playing Margaery Tyrell and the big plot points of the book are in stone. You can’t change them. George R.R. Martin wrote a particular plot line, so on the specifics of Margaery and Tommen getting married, there’s nothing I can do.
Dormer had to work around a plot she couldn’t change, so she made a call to the show’s creators, and they had to find a way to handle it delicately. In contrast, when asked how it compared to her role seducing Brad Pitt in The Counselor, she had no scruples. As she put it:
When Ridley Scott was at the end of the phone, then of course I jumped at that opportunity. I thought, ‘I’ll play a femme fatale/honey-trap one more time for this’.
Note that Pitt was 50 at the time, but Dormer had no reservations whatsoever.
Why Natalie Dormer Is More Than Just a Femme Fatale
Natalie Dormer is anything but a one-trick pony. While she may have carved out a niche as the quintessential femme fatale, her career is anything but a broken record. From her days as the cunning Anne Boleyn in The Tudors to her sultry seduction of Brad Pitt in Ridley Scott’s The Counselor, Dormer has displayed a flair for playing the ultimate schemers and seductresses.
She’s acted Moriarty in CBS’s Elementary and wielded political savvy as Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones. It’s no wonder that some might peg her as a go-to for roles involving a bit of scheming.
But don’t be fooled—Dormer isn’t one to be typecast without a fight. She’s got more dimensions than a Rubik’s Cube. When asked if she was intentionally gravitating towards these femme fatale roles or simply getting typecast, she revealed with a chuckle (via Complex):
I think when you are successful in a role, people immediately offer you roles that fit the blueprint. That’s what happened with Anne Boleyn. For a few years while I was trying to establish my career, people were like, ‘Oh, femme fatale, Natalie Dormer’.
But a few years back I had a conversation with my team where I was like I need to stop playing the femme fatale honey trap because I am being put in a box here.
She found it “hilarious” that right after expressing her desire to break free from being the “femme fatale” typecast, Scott offered her a role that was, quite ironically, exactly that: another seductive, high-stakes character. It’s as if the universe decided to give her a taste of her own medicine, and she couldn’t resist the opportunity, saying:
Oh, you want me to seduce Brad Pitt? Let me think about that.
In a nutshell, Dormer is more than just a pretty face with a knack for intrigue. She’s a dynamic actress, always pushing the envelope and proving that there’s far more to her than meets the eye!
Stream Game of Thrones on Max, as of August 16. 2024.
