Actress Gwendoline Christie is best known for her role as the knight Brienne of Tarth on Game of Thrones, but come December, she will add another major role to her resume as the mysterious (and insanely cool-looking) Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Christie recently talked with Variety about how she approached her role as the new Star Wars villain, saying she found it to be an interesting challenge. Because her character spends most, if not the entire film, in armor and under a helmet, Christie had to find other ways for her character's personality to shine through.
"It becomes about the way in which you hold your hand, the way in which you walk, where your weight lies and what you want that to mean, and I wanted to give the character identity," Christie tells Variety. "I thought it was interesting to make something about the character identifiably female in a non-superficial way, and I hope that comes across."
She goes on to say that her experience under the helmet as Captain Phasma isn't all that different from her portrayal as Brienne. Both characters defy traditional female roles, something that Christie says she found liberating.
"I don't think many female actors get the opportunity to play a part where they're not having to think about the way their face looks, but I found exactly the same thing with Brienne of Tarth, and that was very liberating," she says. "It was great as an actor to work on your skills — that it isn't about holding your head so you look beautiful. It's about what you're transmitting, and to be in service of an idea greater than yourself, whether it's the character's overriding objective or, beyond that, hopefully something more sociopolitical."
Christie will also appear in the next Hunger Games film, Mockingjay Part 2, giving her a major role in three major pop culture franchises.
"They are three enormous things — however, the quality of the writing and the concepts are very, very well developed and very relevant, so everyone seems engaged in the excitement of what these things are doing," she says of Star Wars, Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games. "All three projects are incredibly progressive, so it feels as though everyone's caught up with the idea of that, and everyone's dedicated to giving their absolute best and honoring the set of ideas and setting them forth into the world."
Star Wars: The Force Awakens releases on Dec. 18. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is in theaters on Nov. 20.
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