Exclusive interview with ‘White Lies’ actress Natalie Dormer

English actress Natalie Dormer opened up about her character Edie Hansen in an exclusive interview with The South African.

WHO IS EDIE HANSEN ON ‘WHITE LIES’?

Natalie Dormer, popularly known for her role as Margaery Tyrell on Game of Throne stars on M-Net’s international co-production White Lies. Dormer plays the role of Edie Hansen – an investigative journalist, who is a troubled soul, disconnected from friends and family working in the dying newspaper industry.

Edie is determined to uncover her brother’s killer. But on the same day as his murder, she finds out she is three months pregnant with a baby she neither expects or wants.

Read more about all the White Lies characters here.

Q&A WITH NATALIE DORMER

WHO IS EDIE HANDSEN?

How would you describe your character Edie to viewers?

Edie is a very high functioning, obsessive professional but she is a mess personally. She sort of just needs to do some growing up and face her past and demons. Due to this hook and the beginning of the show of her brother being murdered, she had been in self imposed exile in London for the best part of 15 years. She comes back and this trigger of her brother’s murder is the reason that we go on this “whodunit” journey of finding out who the killer is.

She also goes on this journey of reconciling with her teenage self when that teenager self left South Africa and swore she was never coming back.

So Edie is a character with a lot of emotional depth. What was it like playing that role?

I mean it was a great challenge and opportunity to play someone who has so many contradictions in them and is so together in some ways and is such a mess in others. Darrel Bristow-Bovey, the writer was wonderful in collaborating with me, and really listening to me with picking her apart. She has all these great relationships which has lots or friction in them during the course of the show. The wonderful Brendon Daniels, her niece and nephew, and her love interest relationship. So, she’s got this fantastic push, pull relationships over the course of the eight hours as well as the “whodunit” mystery.

What was it like preparing for the character and did you have a preset ritual?

No, the shoot was very fast, very ambitious what we were trying to achieve in the time that we had so uhmm everyone really hustled in order to create a show that looks and feels it could travel international lengths to attract an international audience as well as feeling uniquely South African. I just loved being apart briefly of a South African family.

NATALIE DORMER’S BEHIND-THE-SCENES TAKE

Do you have a favorite character?
It would be an arm wrestle between Forty (Brendon Daniels) and Avi Kapilevich (Daniel Janks). Both the relationships that Edie has with those men are a lot of fun to play. The whole ensemble was great. Brendon is a great starring partner and you’ll see when you watch the show, you’re not sure about (Daniel) the audience will have to decide

Who was your favourite co-star?
Whoever I was working with that day. Daniel Schultz and Morgan Santo were fantastic and I did a lot of stuff with those two as them playing my niece and nephew. That was an interesting relationship to build. Just the day players… I was truly impressed with the South African cast.

What was your favourite scene to shoot?
I don’t know about favourite, but one of the most dramatic required me putting a wet suit on under my costume so why they couldn’t of shot that scene in February, but we didn’t. I think we shot that scene right at the end, in like June. You’ll have to see why Edie got in the sea.

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