Nathalie Emmanuel was a fan of Game of Thrones long before she joined the cast in Season 3 as Missandei, a trusted adviser to Daenerys Targaryen.
As fate would have it, after two seasons of faithfully watching the HBO series along with other fans, she saw the listing for a “nonwhite actress, playing age 18 to 24,” and immediately jumped at the chance.
“I phoned my agent and she was like, ‘I’ve already got you an audition,’” Emmanuel told BuzzFeed News. The actor knew little about her character’s arc besides the fact that she would appear in a few episodes in Season 3 of the HBO original series, with the possibility but no guarantee of returning in future seasons. Emmanuel was also drawn to the role because of Missandei’s relationship with Daenerys, also known as Daenerys Stormborn, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Mother of Dragons, and Breaker of Chains, among other names.
“When I first had the audition, they just gave us one scene to prepare, so I didn’t know much about Missandei. But what I did know was she’d been through a lot and was a very strong individual,” Emmanuel said.
When viewers first meet Missandei in the first episode of Season 3, she was a slave to Kraznys mo Nakloz (Dan Hildebrand) in Astapor. Kraznys is a slave trader and a Good Master — someone who rules over the three cities that make up the appropriately named Slaver’s Bay. We learn later that she was born on the island of Naath in the Summer Sea, and was removed from her home at a young age before she began her life of servitude. Fluent in 19 languages, Missandei acted as an interpreter between Kraznys and Daenerys when Daenerys visited Astapor. While the slave master was rude and condescending to Daenerys, Missandei “diplomatically” — as Emmanuel described it — translated his words so as to not offend Khaleesi.
After reaching an agreement to trade one of Daenerys’s dragons for his 8,000 Unsullied soldiers and Missandei, the Queen of Dragons spoke to Kraznys in his own language of Low Valyrian and revealed that she understood his insults the whole time Missandei was translating for him. She then orders the Unsullied to attack the Good Masters and kill all of the slave owners and their soldiers. Daenerys and the Unsullied leave Astapor, and Missandei joins her new queen on a journey to reign over Westeros. After freely serving Daenerys and assisting her with handmaiden-like tasks, Missandei eventually earns her place as one of Daenerys’s trusted advisers.