Game of Thrones News: Gwendoline Christie is Brienne Tarth

Casting announcements for Season 2 of Game of Thrones are finally here!  These are the actual people HBO has hired to play the parts, not to be confused with the speculation posts I've been doing up to now.  I'll start each post with the character description (which may be recycled from a speculation post), and then we'll examine the actor who's been announced.  Let's take a look at some of the new players we'll meet in 2012:

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Brienne Tarth

Art by Amok

Brienne is the daughter (and only surviving child) of Selwyn Tarth, the Lord of Evenfall, an island off the coast of the Stormlands.  She is a female warrior, a rare thing in Westeros, especially outside the North, and pledges her sword to the cause of the newly crowned King Renly Baratheon at the very beginning of the second book.  She is as tall or taller than most men, and is considered quite unattractive.  She is described as having "large, blue eyes, straw-colored hair, broad, coarse features, and a flat face. Her teeth are prominent and crooked, her mouth is too wide, her lips are swollen, her nose is battered and has been broken more than once, and her face is covered in freckles. She is tall and ungainly, thick for a woman." (from Tower of the Hand)

















Gwendoline Christie

The guys at WiC were dead-on with this one, good for them, I was way too scared to even try to pick a Brienne. It's tricky because I don't know a ton of British actresses who are close to or taller than six feet, and the ones I do know about look like super models, often because that's how they got their start.  Brienne can't be played by a super-model. 

I like this choice. Gwen isn't ugly, but I can see how they can give her a bad haircut, some false teeth, and a nose prosthetic, and she's Brienne.  It doesn't hurt that GRRM said she basically had the part the minute she walked in the room. His enthusiasm always gives me confidence.  From looking at IMDB, the only way you've ever seen Gwen is in a small scene in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, or if you frequent British playhouses.  I'm sure some of our British brethren will dig up some new photos of her and get them on the web in the next nine months, but for now the pickings are slim. Oh, did I mention she's 6'3"? :)

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Season 2 Cast Additions:

Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell

Gwendoline Christie as Brienne Tarth