Nathalie Emmanuel

Nathalie Emmanuel showed up as Missandei in Game of Thrones and I was sold immediately. I’d seen her before in Misfits, that British show where nobody stays dead, but appearing in HBO’s bloody medieval fantasy was different.

She played the handmaiden, the translator, basically there to fill space in someone else’s scene. But she had enough presence that you ended up watching her instead.

The show was built on uncomfortable orientalist fantasy, the kind of thing that made you feel complicit just watching it. But at least when they finally gave her a real role, when she wasn’t just there to serve, there was something worth your time.