‘Game Of Thrones’: Keisha Castle-Hughes On Playing Sand Snake Obara

Keisha Castle-Hughes as Obara Sand (Helen Sloan/HBO)

Prince Oberyn will be avenged. At least that’s what Ellaria Sand and his daughters, the Sand Snakes, hope to do this season on “Game of Thrones.”

“They’re pretty kick-ass too,” George R.R. Martin previously told Access Hollywood of how Oberyn’s daughters take after daddy. But the one who perhaps takes after his fighting spirit the most is Obara, played by Keisha Castle-Hughes.

Keisha made her debut on the HBO series as Obara Sand, Oberyn’s oldest daughter (who uses the same weapon – the spear – as her late pop), alongside Rosabell Laurenti Sellers as Tyene, and Jessica Henwick as Nym, on Sunday night.

“Game of Thrones” may have left fans scarred over the years, and hesitant to embrace any new character, lest they die in a head-crushing battle to the death, but Obara and her sisters, might just break down those walls again, giving fans new characters to believe in. Stepping into Obara’s shoes wasn’t just a great role for Keisha, it was a role on one of her favorite shows, and she found out she got the gig the very week Oberyn met his end at the hands of The Mountain during Season 4. Keisha spoke with Access Hollywood about her conversations with producers to get the character just right, and the daughter selfies her co-star sent Pedro Pascal from the Season 5 set.

AccessHollywood.com: Had you been watching the show when they approached you?
Keisha Castle-Hughes: Oh yeah, I’m a massive fan of the show and I’ve been watching it from the pilot, so it’s a very bizarre thing when you get an audition script that’s got the name of a show that you really love. It’s a terrifying and exciting feeling.

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Access: Did you totally fall in love with Pedro Pascal as Oberyn last year like everyone else in the world?
Keisha: Oh my gosh! What a hard act to follow. As a viewer, it was so exciting when him and Ellaria turned up on screen and it was just that thing — it was like so different to anything that we’d seen or heard for so long. The clothing that they wore and like their accents and the fact that they wore makeup – they seemed so exotic, which is perfect because everyone from Dorne I think is very exotic to the rest of Westeros. So I totally fell in love with him.

Access: Did you have any idea that Oberyn was going to get killed?
Keisha: Well, I read the books in high school and so I knew that I knew that in the books that happened, but I was like, ‘No one can kill this guy,’ like, ‘Obviously [this is] the show and they can make those decision now.’ But, you know, I actually found that I was playing Obara Sand – it was in the same week that the episode with The Mountain/Oberyn scene [aired].

Access: Oh my gosh!
Keisha: I don’t think that was like pre-decided or determined, that’s just the timing that happened. But I was watching it — that episode — and because I’d been in this audition process for like… maybe five weeks and so I’d invested a lot of my energy and heart into it, and into understanding who this character was, and so watching that episode and knowing that I was about to play his eldest daughter, I had like a very emotional response. And my roommate at the time was like, ‘Dude! Like I know that you like ‘Game of Thrones,’ but why are you so upset?’ And of course, you’re immediately sworn to secrecy so I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d been cast. I couldn’t even really tell anyone I was auditioning for it, and I was like, ‘I don’t know. I just really love the show.’ She was like, ‘I’m concerned about how much you love the show!’

Access: A lot of us were heartbroken about his exit … He put so much into that performance and when he went, I think it broke all of our hearts.
Keisha: Absolutely. Even arriving on set was hilarious because we were newbies anyway and it can be a little daunting entering a show that’s so established with a cast and crew that all know each other so well, and spend so much time together and there’s a dynamic that exists and you don’t know where you fit in and I was just glad that I got to do it with Jessica and Rosie, who are playing my sisters, so we were a newbie group. But it was hard because every time we’d walk into makeup they’d be like, ‘Ahhh, it’s the Sand Snakes. Oh, we wish Pedro was here…’ They were like, ‘We love him,’ and then we’d get to sit [down] and everyone would be like, ‘Oh, it’s Pedro’s daughters! You’re reminding us of how much we love him.’ And eventually we were like, ‘Do you guys like us as well?’ (laughs)

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Access: Have you had a chance to speak with him or meet him?
Keisha: No, I haven’t and I like keep putting things out into the universe. It will happen one time. We have talked through people. It’s like a weird thing that happens in this industry all the time, so he keeps working with friends of mine and I keep working with friends of his and so we keep being like, ‘Oh my God, tell him I said hi.’ But when we were shooting, via Indira [Varma, who plays Ellaria], we would send him lots of, ‘Hi daddy, we miss you,’ selfies from set.

Access: You didn’t! That is so amazing. So Obara — what a great character. She’s so different from the other two and so ballsy. Was she written like that on the page? You said you read the books, so were you pulling from that?
Keisha: It was a combination of a lot of things. Obviously the great thing about working on the show and coming in later is like David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss, the executive producers] have like a very clear vision of where they’re going now. They would never ever reveal anything to any of us, of course, but I think they have a very clear vision of where — how the story pans out and so we’d discuss at length about who Obara was and I mean, the interesting thing is one of the most important things for them initially was her physicality and she’s described as being of a similar build to like Brienne of Tarth, and I’m like pushing 5’1″ and I have twigs for arms.

Access: You’re closer to Podrick’s size than Brienne.
Keisha: Exactly. And so, we had to like figure out a way of getting around that, but I think a lot of it was the fact that she – Obara likes to think of herself as a warrior monk. She meditates and kills. She spends her time meditating or killing, which seems like those things don’t go hand and hand, but in Dorne it makes a lot of sense. And so a lot of it was like creating a character that had a strength, I think, from the inside — that was really important — and that had like a lot of leadership qualities, because she is — she’s the oldest of all of these sisters that she has. She wields the same weapon as her dad, so she has a lot to live up to, and she has spent her entire life trying nothing but to impress him and I think Oberyn absolutely has loved all his daughters dearly and in equal measures, but I think Obara likes to think that she’s the favorite. And so it was interesting to play [that] in terms of how she reacted to his death ’cause I think out of all of them, she’s taken it the hardest, in the sense that she doesn’t have anything outside of him. Whereas the other girls… there’s lots of elements that exist [for them] that don’t exist for Obara and so it was important for us all to figure out how we play that without her being emotional, but without her coming across like she’s dead inside as well. It’s a very fine line.

“Game of Thrones” continues Sundays at 9 PM ET/PT on HBO.

— Jolie Lash