One minute they hate her, the next they love her. It’s all in a day’s work for a TV witch, but Dutch actress Carice van Houten, who plays Melisandre, the notorious Red Woman on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has learned to weather the mood swings of the show’s emotional — some might say bipolar — fan base.
“When I killed Shireen [Kerry Ingram] I didn’t really gain a lot of sympathy,” says van Houten, 39, referring to Stannis Baratheon’s young daughter. “People said, ‘We will forgive you if you save Jon Snow [Kit Harington].’ So now, it’s like ‘Carice for president.’ Before, I was the most hated woman on television. All of a sudden people are saying, ‘Marry me.’”
After Melisandre raised Jon Snow from the dead on Sunday’s episode, the actress tweeted, “‘Happy now?’ It was retweeted 23,000 times. Now, I’m cool.”
Happy now? 😜
— Carice van Houten (@caricevhouten) May 2, 2016
Van Houten has achieved worldwide fame for playing the spooky and supple high priestess after a prestigious career in her native Holland — she lives in Amsterdam — and playing Tom Cruise’s wife in the 2008 film “Valkyrie.” She remembers her “Game of Thrones” audition as unremarkable, suggesting nothing of her eventual notoriety.
“It was in a little room in Belfast with five men and I just f–ked up, linewise,” she says. “I got nervous. I had to pretend I was conjuring gods on the beach. It was a big scene, a big monologue. It needed some imagination, I guess. But even though I f - - ked up, apparently I did a nice job.”
That’s putting it mildly. Frequently clad in Melisandre’s signature color — dark red — van Houten cuts an alluring and sometimes ruthless figure. Alluring because of the nudity required, which van Houten says is “not pleasurable,” as the character “uses her body and her sexuality as a weapon.”
Ruthless, because Melisandre does not shy away from the most despicable behavior, as when the teenaged Shireen was burned at the stake in one of Season 5’s most controversial episodes. The actress reveals that filming the scene was every bit as awful as it eventually played out on-screen.
“On page it was unbearable, doing it live was even worse,” she says. “It was all so grim. The weather was grim. There was a wind machine and a snow machine and the girl screaming. It was just brutal.”
Before, I was the most hated woman on television. All of a sudden people are saying, ‘Marry me.’
- Carice van Houten on her change of fortune after her character, Melisandre, brought Jon Snow back to life on 'Game of Thrones'
Another challenging aspect of playing the role is speaking High Valyrian, the “GoT” lingo Melisandre used to say prayers over Snow’s corpse.
“It’s quite difficult to speak because you have no reference whatsoever,” van Houten says. The similarity to the “g” sound in her native Dutch made those lines easier to memorize, but she says it takes “way more time” to learn the jargon than Melisandre’s regular dialogue.
As “Game of Thrones” heads toward its conclusion, fans want to know who will ascend the Iron Throne.
Van Houten, who is expecting her first child with her boyfriend, actor Guy Pearce, at the end of the year, has some ideas.
“I understand that people would want Jon Snow. He’s good. He’s what everyone wants to be close to,” she says. “But a woman would be nice as well. The women are quite tough. You have to be. I love Cersei (Lena Headey). I’m not convinced that Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) will take it. What if Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) could become king?”
Van Houten wonders about Jon Snow’s affable sidekick. She pauses, as if to shrug. “Never gonna happen.”