Aimee Richardson

Aimee Richardson
Information
Date of birth	29 December 1997
Birthplace	Bangor, Northern Ireland
Role	Myrcella Baratheon
First episode	"Winter Is Coming"
Last episode	"The Old Gods and the New"
Appeared in	8 episodes
External links
IMDb
Twitter

"I'm a little girl, and I'm getting to dress up as a princess - and get paid for it! It's mental!"

―Aimee Richardson

Aimee Richardson (born 29 December 1997) is an actress who portrayed Myrcella Baratheon in Season 1 and Season 2 of Game of Thrones. She is from Bangor, Northern Ireland.

Her acting career started with a role in the 2008 film, Miss Conception. She has also starred in The Sparticle Mystery (2015), Storyland (2016), and My Mother and Other Strangers (2016).

On Game of Thrones

In the pilot, Myrcella was a non-speaking role, and Aimee Richardson was not originally intended to be permanently cast as Myrcella: no casting decision had been made yet, and she was simply a stand-in for the auditions involving other cast members, such as Cersei and Jaime. However, the TV series creators discovered that they enjoyed Richardson's strong acting ability for her age, so they decided to officially cast her as Myrcella. She initially appeared as a guest star in the first season and returned in this role for the second season.

Richardson didn't appear in Season 3 or Season 4, because Myrcella was sent to Dorne, and thus had no scenes in the third book. As Richardson put it in a twitter post just after Season 3 began airing, she's "too busy getting a tan in Dorne to appear in S3."

Similar to Jack Gleeson (who plays her character's older brother Joffrey), Richardson's natural speaking voice has a pronounced Irish accent, and the upper-class, Received Pronunciation accent she adopts while playing Myrcella on-screen is a conscious part of her performance. As Richardson explained, she knew from a young age that if she wanted to become a professional actress, most major roles require a Received Pronunciation accent, so she had been practicing a British-English accent well before casting began for Game of Thrones. She enjoys playing around with different accents at home with her father, and can do a Russian or American South accent reasonably well too.

All hail Queen Myrcella, First of Her Name.

Richardson hasn't read all of the books - at 15 years old, she was only just allowed to watch the show, and even then had to cover her face with a pillow during certain mature scenes. She has read spoilers, however, and looked up what happens to Myrcella in later books, so she knew what was coming for her character.

The day after Joffrey was killed in the Season 4 episode "The Lion and the Rose", Richardson posted a video on her Vine account: it consisted of the last few seconds of Joffrey's poisoning, followed by video of Richardson (with mock solemnity) crowning herself with a tiara, and then announcing "I'm ready" - celebrating that this means Myrcella is now a massive step closer to sitting on the Iron Throne herself. The tiara was actually worn by Aimee's mother on her wedding day.

Recasting

At the San Diego Comic-Con 2014 Game of Thrones panel the official announcement of new cast members for the upcoming season revealed that after a two-year absence by the character, the older Myrcella who returns in Season 5 would be recast. Nell Tiger Free replaced Aimee Richardson in the role. The reasons for the recast were never revealed.

Richardson reacts to her role being recast for Season 5.

On June 28th, three days after the recasting announcement, Richardson responded by posting a new video clip on her Vine account, showing her sitting on the side of the road as if she was a beggar, but wearing her princess tiara, while holding a sign saying "Princess for hire". The title of the video was, "Well, this is embarrassing".

Credits

Guest starring

Game of Thrones: Season 1
Winter Is Coming	The Kingsroad	Lord Snow	Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things	The Wolf and the Lion
A Golden Crown	You Win or You Die	The Pointy End	Baelor	Fire and Blood

Game of Thrones: Season 2
The North Remembers	The Night Lands	What Is Dead May Never Die	Garden of Bones	The Ghost of Harrenhal
The Old Gods and the New	A Man Without Honor	The Prince of Winterfell	Blackwater	Valar Morghulis

Quotes

"I'm a little girl, and I'm getting to dress up as a princess - and get paid for it! It's mental!" - In response to the question, "What is your impression of Myrcella's costumes?"

"I'm a very big Audrey Hepburn fan, Breakfast at Tiffany's is my favorite movie in the world. And on my wall behind my bed I have lots of my favorite quotes, and I've got a lot of Audrey Hepburn. And there's one of hers where she said, 'The most important thing is to enjoy yourself, to be happy, that's all that matters.' - and I just think that's a really nice way of living. Not trying to please everyone else, just be happy."

"I love evil characters too, in drama school I've played a few evil characters, and they are SO much fun. You just get to be horrible all day! It's like letting out every little thing inside you you've ever kept in, and all of a sudden you're just like "A HATE YOU ALL!" - So Cersei! Cersei, basically."

Asked if she wants to play Cersei: "Ultimately I think I'd go for Daenerys, because she is BAD ASS, and she's got dragons! Who doesn't want dragons? And not just one she's got three of them. So yeah, Daenerys would be it for me, but Cersei is a close second."

"I had this scene when I was being sent off to Dorne, and I was in my little boat, I had to cry during that. Which, well that was my last day of filming for Season 2, I knew I wasn't coming back for a while. So I was already feeling emotional about that, and I then I just kind of thought about what she [Myrcella] would be feeling. And she wasn't going to see her family for, maybe, years. And then I kind of though, 'I'm not going to see them for years!' - so it was pretty easy to get the tears."

See also

• Aimee Richardson on IMDb
• Aimee Richardson on X
• Aimee Richardson on Instagram