Evil McEvildom

[selenak]

Incidentally, not being that great a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire apparantly helps with really digging A Game of Thrones' version of Cersei. Every time I read a complaint about how she's "softened", my inner reaction is "you mean the part where she doesn't come across like the caricature of a high school mean girl stereotype? Lena Heady, I love you, please keep doing that!" Seriously. From what I (admittedly dimly) remember of the scenes between Tyrion and Cersei from A Clash of Kings, they went, described from Tyrion's pov, thusly: Cersei: *is mean, cruel, mean, stupid, mean, cruel, and did I mention, mean?* Tyrion: *is smart, witty, secretly hurting but bravely not showing it, smart, and did I mention, witty?* Whereas the way Dinklage and Heady act them out allows for several more layers. Take the scene in 2.02 where Tyrion makes a crack about Jaime and Cersei. There is a silent pause. Then Cersei says: "You're very funny. But nothing will ever match your first jest. When you were born, and you killed my mother." Which I think is from the book, but whereas in the book I had the impression we were just supposed to see this as an(other) example of Cersei being cruel and Tyrion getting hurt by his horrible family, on the show it made me feel for Cersei as well as Tyrion. She was still being cruel, but the way Lena played it also made me think of Cersei at eight, losing her mother; she sold it to me that Cersei felt that loss still even while using it to strike back at Tyrion. Ditto this week when Cersei has her outburst about Marcella in the same episode in which she's cat-and-mouse toying with Sansa. It's not that I don't want female villains; but I think Cersei as a villain capable of more than one emotion is more interesting than the mean girl caricature I remember from the novels.

Speaking of villains: The Daily Beast decided Jackie Florrick is the one from The Good Wife (oookay; Jackie's intrusive and bigotted, but in a show which has any number of looking-out-for-no.1. schemers to offer and just acquired a new one, not to mention recurring characters who include a wife murdering drug lord and a probably wife murdering skeevy Lector wannabe, Jackie is "the de facto main villain?) and interviewed the actress playing her, Mary Beth Peil. Who sounds smart, insightful and funny in this interview. Apparantly, she used to be an opera singer, so the interview concludes on a light note:

Q: You have an amazing singing voice, but unfortunately, I doubt we’ll get to see Jackie burst into song in The Good Wife.

Al: (Laughs.) I don’t think so. Although Julianna still keeps prodding Robert and Michelle [King] to write a dream sequence for me and Christine Baranski and Alan [Cumming] to do, a musical theater number. That would be great!

Comments

[lonelywalker]

I did get the impression of Cersei as rather one-note and cruel in the books... until we started getting her POV, and suddenly the realities of her life became utterly shocking: losing her mother so young, being eternally second best to Jaime just because she's a girl, being married off to a man she despises for a life of being raped and having little to no agency, haunted by prophecies... I still don't think she's a "good" person, but certainly an understandable one.

The TV show seems to be doing a much better job of showing us all sides of the characters from the very start. The same thing applies to Jaime, I think. And even Joffrey.

[selenak]

The same thing does apply to Jaime, though the Jaime pov is written as more sympathetic from the author than Cersei's is, as far as I recall. But I haven't read the books in ages, and never more than once. What I do recall from Feast of Crows is less the added information about Cersei's background - which you're right, make her more understandable, and which the show uses early on - and more Martin's relentless harping on her sex life and weight gain, which left a bad taste in my mouth.

[lonelywalker]

Strangely, I never picked up on the weight gain references until I saw it mentioned online, but they are clearly there.

I wonder if TV!Cersei will have any positive effect on book!Cersei in the future. Her fate is one of the ones that interests me most, although I'm fairly sure it's not going to be a happy one.

[lilacsigil]

I haven't read the books, but the TV Cersei is definitely a complex and understandable character, even when she does terrible things. The saddest thing for me is that she can exert power over, say, Ned and Sansa Stark, or Littlefinger, but is utterly powerless and undermined by the men and boys of her own family, who should be her allies. Jaime is the closest thing to an ally and (so far) he's sort of useless - he's passive at court, and then he's been captured.