During day three of Comic-Con on Saturday, Entertainment Weekly hosted its annual “Women Who Kick Ass”; panel, bringing in special guests Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Nicole Beharie (Sleepy Hollow), Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story), Katey Sagal (Sons of Anarchy) and Game of Thrones stars Maisie Williams and Natalie Dormer.
Tatiana Maslany and Sarah Paulson discussed how the extreme nature of the characters they play — a number of vastly different clones for Tatiana, the “Supreme”; witch for Sarah — allow them to push their performances to the limit. “As soon as I have fears or doubts, it’s like that’s where you have to go as an actor,”; said Tatiana. “Because then all the surprising stuff comes out of there, and you don’t know what you’re capable of.”; Sarah discussed the season finale of season two (Asylum), featuring a flash-forward of her character at age 80. “I looked exactly like my grandmother in the most terrifying way,”; she said of the extensive makeup, adding she wasn’t thrilled with the “bird seed boobs”; makeup artists cooked up for her.
Sons of Anarchy“s Katey Sagal admitted she knew she had to play Lady Macbeth-inspired biker mama Gemma Teller when she read a scene in the pilot script that required Gemma to “take a syringe to [former Sopranos actress] Drea de Matteo, and it was the most conniving and calm way that I threatened her life… plus I get to wear all that leather.”;
Nicole Beharie revealed that her role as a kick-ass cop on Sleepy Hollow has led her to “realize that there’s a certain strength that I have now, or a certain command that I have being one of the leads on the show that I hadn’t had before… Just owning that space and not being expected, as a woman, to shrink, or curtsy, or any of those sorts of things.”;
Game of Thrones” star Natalie Dormer (who plays Margaery Tyrell) told fans that she once took a “which Game of Thrones character are you?”; quiz — and wound up as Arya. The panel’s sweetest moment, however, came when Natalie was asked which GoT character she would play if she had her choice, and she picked Arya, causing co-star Maisie Williams to giggle.
