Fantasy fans are a notoriously obsessive lot. Had any proposals?
Ha! Nobody’s proposed yet, no. Nobody’s gone down on one knee. But my biggest aim in the first season was to keep the fans happy. I knew that Dany was a loved and hated character in the books, and I wanted to be true to everyone’s imagination of her while also being true to my interpretation. If I’ve managed that, then fantastic. But I don’t really look at stuff online. At the start I was looking and found something which wasn’t very nice, so now I leave it all. If there’s something that people are desperately happy with or unhappy with, you tend to hear about it anyway.
What’s the role of women in Game of Thrones?
You’re still in an environment where men dominate, and it’s strange to see a strong woman. Dany’s fortunate in some ways in that most of the strong men in her life have died so it’s just her. But with Cersei you see this huge struggle with the fact that her son Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) is turning into a stronger male person but she’s still a woman. It’s an interesting powerplay. The women have the harder path, so they’re more interesting than the men who are born into it.
