GoT Star Lena Headey on Fans Who Love Cersei Lannister: 'I'm Worried for Them'

There are two kinds of actors: mediocre and brilliant. Also, there are two types of people: stupid and adequate. When stupid people meet brilliant actors in real life, they can’t tell the difference between the character and the person behind them, and that can lead to many embarrassing and even dangerous situations.

Lena Headey, one of the lead stars of Game of Thrones, portrayed the rather evil character of Cersei Lannister, and she had to deal with the consequences of other people’s stupidity quite a lot.

Often, she would find herself in a situation where she was just going around her daily business, and some stranger would start lashing at her.

While speaking at Conan on TBS, Lena Headey addressed these situations — but her revelation had a peculiar twist since apparently, she was not that worried about the people who hated her for “being” Queen Cersei. She was way more bothered when fans were praising her character and telling her how much they loved her.

“I mean, I guess [when fans hate you for portraying an evil character,] it's a compliment. It’s when you’re buying a table and someone’s like, ‘You are that f*cking b*tch!’ [But when] people say ‘I love her,’ I kind of worry more for them,” the actress shared during the interview.

We can definitely see what Headey meant. People who genuinely love sadistic, insane, or otherwise evil characters can raise quite a few concerns — especially when they’re talking about that to the people who portrayed those characters. Actors have to dive into their characters’ inner darkness, so this sounds wild for them.

Lena Headey was not the first performer to address this issue, too. Christian Bale and Antony Starr, for example, were also terrified and shocked when they learned that many people were idolizing their most twisted characters (Patrick Bateman and Homelander, respectively), and they shared the GoT star’s concern for those fans.

Source: Conan on TBS via YouTube