15 Secondary Game Of Thrones Characters We Can’t Recognize Off Screen

7. Margaery Tyrell – Natalie Dormer

Natalie Dormer is no stranger to period dramas where she gets to be the hot consort to a king. Before taking a pivotal role in Game of Thrones, she played Anne Boleyn on The Tudors. She wears a brown wig to cover up her blonde hair on the show. She’s also spent some time with her head halfway shaved thanks to her time on The Hunger Games. “The key is the wig. The hair department of Game of Thrones is incredible,” she said. “I go from my long blonde hair to this brunette color…. I look in the mirror in the hair chair and that’s when I see Margaery.” She also wears clothes that are a lot more complex than they look. “There’s so much infrastructure in Margaery’s costumes because my breasts don’t naturally sit in that position,” said Dormer. “They’re incredibly made.” She’s gone on record talking about how inspired she is by the fans who painstakingly recreate her costumes and how inspiring Margaery herself can be. “When people ask me about Margaery, I say they’re not mutually exclusive. You don’t have to be practical and politically savvy and not be a good person. You can be a good human being and just be shrewd.”

6. Brienne Of Tarth – Gwendoline Christie

Unlike most actresses on this show who’ve had to wear wigs to give themselves long hair, Gwendoline Christiehad to chop her long hair off to play the more androgynous Brienne of Tarth. Unlike Brienne, who is described as homely looking, Gwendoline herself is gorgeous. As a model, many fans of the books were concerned when she got cast as Brienne that she wouldn’t be able to fit the bill to play someone unattractive (she’s described as “the ugliest woman in Westeros”). However, author George R.R. Martin approved her casting himself, talking about how she truly embodied the character.“This was another one of those cases where there was hardly any debate…her look was just perfect….She came in looking… well, like Brienne.”

Gwendoline has also been upfront about how transforming into Brienne wasn’t all fun and games. She had to train to fight and learn how to carry herself in a less feminine way, and she had to overcome the pain of chopping off her long hair. “When they cut my hair off, the transformation was complete,” she says. “I really, really miss it. When I had it cut I was a good girl on set – I went to my dialogue session and my horse-riding session – then I went to my hotel room, shut the door and sobbed for two hours.”

5. Shireen Baratheon – Kerry Ingram

Kerry Ingram is an accomplished girl. I actually feel confident saying that she’s achieved more as a teenager than most will achieve in their entire lives. Before coming to Game of Thrones, she rose to fame as Matilda Wormwood in the Matilda musical. She was the only kid playing Matilda who went on to play the role in the West End production. She was also in Les Miserables in a small role, and she’s the kid who sang the Rings Of Akhaten song in season 7 of Doctor Who, which is probably the best episode in the Eleventh Doctor’s run of the show. She then went on to play a role in Game of Thrones, where she had to drastically alter her appearance to play Shireen Baratheon. Shireen doesn’t just have different hair, she has greyscale on her face which drastically altered her appearance.

Fun fact: Stephen Dillane, who plays her father Stannis on the show, would hug Shireen kind of awkwardly, which we all thought was just another example of how awkward Stannis could be. However, the actual reason for that was because Kerry Ingram has a form of brittle bone disease and Dillane was going out of his way not to hurt her.

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