Lena Headey Wishes Cersei Lannister Had Gotten A Better Ending
(This post contains spoilers for the final season of Game of Thrones.)
Game of Thrones went off the air for good nearly a month ago, and fans of the series are still chewing on what happened during its endgame. A lot of fans were disappointed in the series’ ending- and so, it turns out, were some of the cast members.
Lena Headey, who played Cersei Lannister for the entire run of the series, gave an interview this week in which she made clear she’s not entirely satisfied with how things ended for her character.
In an interview with The Guardian, Headey addressed the death of Cersei.
“I will say I wanted a better death,” Headey said.
“I’ve got a few of my own gripes. But I haven’t sat down drunkly with David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] yet.”
Cersei Lannister died in the second-to-last episode of the series when Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon attacked King’s Landing and aimed dragonfire at the Red Keep. Cersei and her brother/lover, Jaime Lannister, died under the falling rubble of the castle.
“Obviously you dream of your death,” Headey went on to say in the Guardian interview.
“You could go in any way on that show. So I was kind of gutted. But I just think they couldn’t have pleased everyone. No matter what they did, I think there was going to be some big comedown from the climb.”
She also revealed the existence of a WhatsApp group chat of consisting of the Game of Thrones actors, which has survived even after the end of the series.
In the interview, Headey did not address the rumors that she refused to share scenes with Jerome Flynn, who played Bronn on Game of Thrones, due to a supposed years-ago affair between the two of them that did not end well.
Now that Game of Thrones is over, Headey is concentrating on several projects, including a short film she directed called The Trap, as well as her work on behalf of refugees.
There have been various hints, since the airing of Game of Thrones‘ final episodes, that actors on the show aren’t happy with how it ended. In the documentary, The Last Watch, footage of a table read showed Kit Harington (Jon Snow) visibly upset to learn that his character kills Daenerys. Per Pop Crush, red carpet interviews with some of the actors, including Emilia Clarke, have offered less than subtle hints that the actors were opposed to the ending of the series.