Throughout her acting career, which experienced a significant bump thanks to Game of Thrones, Gwendoline Christie had one name towards top of her wish list of people to work with: Tim Burton. When Christie was offered a shot to work with the iconic director on his new Netflix series, Wednesday, she genuinely had no idea how to react.
“Truly, I stopped and went silent,” Christie told WWD. “I’m fairly certain I atomized. And then by some mysterious force I came back together into something at least partially resembling a human being, and I had to just put the phone away and carry on. I didn’t even say anything for a little bit because I just had to process.”
However, when Christie hopped on our first Zoom call with Burton to discuss her playing the role of Principal Weems, she learned that Burton was also starry-eyed at meeting the one and only Brienne of Tarth:
“At the end [of the call], I was really red in the face and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so embarrassed and overwhelmed.’ And he said, ‘God, I want to hide under the table,’” Christie says.
After the thrill of meeting each other finally subsided and everyone stopped trying to duck under the furniture, the two immediately got to work crafting Christie’s Wednesday character, and she was surprised at the creative freedom that Burton gave her.
“I really wanted the opportunity to transform, I really did,” Christie said. “And nobody would ever have cast me in that role. As an actor, I always want to play something far away from myself.”
(Via WWD)