Nathalie Emmanuel on fighting unjust power – on and off screen
For a woman best known as a Game of Thrones character, Nathalie Emmanuel is doing her level best to not sit still. In fact, typecast Emmanuel at your peril. A consummate, lifelong performer, her career began as a child playing Nala in the West End production of The Lion King and in the last few years, she has become a hacker in The Fast and the Furious franchise, turned her hand to comedy – in both Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral and in her Emmy-nominated turn in Die Hart, alongside John Travolta and Kevin Hart – and found herself cast in cinematic legend Francis Ford Coppola’s next project. Her career’s variety is impressive and, lately, there has not been a sword or dragon in sight.
It’s why her latest move makes sense. Emmanuel will next be seen in The Invitation, a good old-fashioned gothic horror movie. "I've always been really interested in trying my hand at all kinds of genres," she tells me. "It was something I hadn’t done before and I was so eager to try."
The shoot in Budapest was, by all accounts, hugely fun, if exhausting. "I mean, practically, playing sheer terror and trauma is very, very tiring," she says. "It’s a useful sensation though, because though you feel like there's nothing left; you have to keep pushing through. And that's true of when you're a character trying to survive a horror!"
Yet The Invitation is more than its blood-soaked parts. When Emmanuel’s recently orphaned American artist Evie finds British relatives through an online DNA test, she accepts an invitation to a family wedding at an aristocratic estate – one that she ends up wishing she hadn’t RSVP'd to. The film is as much an homage to gothic horror tales as it is a commentary on power structures and oppression. It is Get Out meets Bram Stoker.
"I was taken with how the script looked at race, power and class and how all of those things intersect," she says, noting that one of the things which appealed to her was the film’s director, Jessica M Thompson. "These people are at the of top of that power structure, being very wealthy, being white, being mostly men. Evie, being a biracial working-class woman, is immediately placed in a situation where she is ill at ease. For me, as a woman of colour, who also didn't come from wealth, I immediately connected with that, and used how I navigate spaces that weren't necessarily made, or designed for me, to get into the role."
"What this film does is take those ideas of people, particularly women, being exploited for the advancement and power of other people, usually men, and put this worst-case scenario, horror trope on to that," she continues. "It’s this heightened kind of world, but really, it's very much grounded in things that are still very relevant."
Her most high-profile role to-date, Missandei, was one that also blended modern-day political nuance with fantastical elements – though perhaps inadvertently. When Emmanuel’s character was beheaded in one of Game of Thrones’ final episodes, there was more than just the usual uproar that met the show’s prolific kill rate. Noted director Ava DuVernay was a leading voice in a chorus of similar outrage. “So... the one and only sister on the whole epic, years-long series? That’s what you wanna do? Okay,” she tweeted at the time. It raised an important question about representation. Emmanuel was, for much of the series, the only woman of colour in a major role.
"I will always think of her fondly. I loved her so much and her death sparked a really important conversation about inclusion and diversity in shows like that," she says, having commented at the time that, while she was "calm” about being killed off, the response left "me all in my feelings". "You can see the change since then, because I just watched the first episode of House of the Dragon and just straight away I thought, oh, wow – it is so great to see so many different kinds of faces, different kinds of people. It made me really happy because ultimately I’m just a huge fan!”
Missandei’s demise may have been a water-cooler moment for diversity – particularly in fantasy shows like GOT which often lean heavily into stereotypical casting – but she stresses the importance of keeping a conversation going. "Someone once told me: when you're treading water in the ocean, if you stop pedalling, you get pulled out to sea. And so, I feel like that's what this conversation is always going to be like, we have to keep treading water," she says. "I love seeing inclusion on screen, but we need to still keep fighting for inclusion behind the camera, especially in those decision-making rooms. We need to keep momentum going."
Next up, Emmanuel will be preparing for the role of a lifetime in Coppola’s long-awaited next film, Megalopolis – the plot for which is extremely under wraps, but the starry cast, which includes Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza and Laurence Fishburne, is not. Though she is tight-lipped about production, and her role, she is open about where she wants to see her career go next. "I’d love to go back to the theatre," she says. "I started there so young, doing musicals, but I would kill for a great, straight play. I would love to find the right part…"
Before we put it out into the universe that Nathalie Emmanuel would like a great plum stage role, we return briefly to the chief subject matter of The Invitation. No, not ghouls: weddings. “I’ve never had a bad experience at a wedding you know, I actually love them. Good people, good food, great tunes. It’s so much fun,” she grins, before adding in a mischievously; “So long as no one dies of course…”
The Invitation is in cinemas from 26 August.
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