‘Game Of Thrones’ Star Keisha Castle-Hughes Calls Obara Sand ‘Fun,’ ‘Terrifying’

Keisha Castle-Hughes knows how to keep a secret. (Spoiler Alert: The end of “Game of Thrones” Season 7, episode 2 will be discussed below.) When she spoke to International Business Times last week, she didn’t even hint that her time on “Game of Thrones” was coming to an end. Her character Obara Sand died in battle in Sunday’s episode. While Castle-Hughes didn’t talk about her death, she did dish on her reaction to what turned out to be her brutal final scenes.

“It’s always fun playing Obara. It’s always fun and terrifying because she’s a psycho,” Castle-Hughes laughed when IBT asked about her reaction to Obara’s Season 7 storyline. “So the thing is that I always get to do stuff that you never in your wildest dreams imagine with spears and fighting alongside my sisters. So there’s always an adrenaline rush.”

That is exactly what Obara did in “Game of Thrones” Season 7, episode 2. In the last 10 minutes of the episode, Obara and her sisters were bickering and trying to sleep on one of Yara Greyjoy’s (Gemma Whelan) boats when Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk) attacked.

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When the battle started, Obara and Nymeria (Jessica Henwick) went on deck to join the fight. The women were overpowered, though. It wasn’t long before Obara was impaled with her own spear and Nymeria was choked with her whip. Their bodies were displayed on the bow of the ship, making it pretty clear that the wounds are fatal.

Castle-Hughes revealed that she didn’t even know how her Season 7 scenes fit into the episode. “We literally get given our pages, but we don’t read full scripts,” the 27-year-old explained. “You don’t read any storylines that involve anyone else. So I know what happens to me, but I never know in what context it’s happening, which is very much like the show. All those characters are all living in their own worlds in their own universes without a lot of contact with each other. But I kind of enjoy it that way because that keeps it magical.”

“But I will say, I think the thing is is that the sand snakes and the people of Dorne were pretty happy just hanging out in Dorne and not bothering with all the other stuff that was going on in Westeros and now they’ve definitely been pulled into it,” she continued.

The death of Obara is sad, but it’s certainly not the end of Hughes’ time on the small screen. She already has a new project set to debut Aug. 1, “Manhunt: Unabomber.” The scripted miniseries is based on the true story of how the FBI caught terrorist Ted Kaczynski, who managed to send over a dozen bombs through the mail over two decades, killing three and injuring 23. Castle-Hughes plays FBI agent named Tabby who is based on several real women who worked in the San Francisco FBI office on the Unabomber case.

“I do love any kind of crime history and I always end up watching the crime channel and listening to crime podcasts,” the New Zealand native admitted. “And so I was fascinated by Ted Kaczynski actually and had learned about him when I was a teenager.”

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To play Tabby, Castle-Hughes decided to actually read Kaczynski’s manifesto. “The material itself isn’t necessarily light,” she said of the drama. “It’s quite heavy to deal with on a daily basis, to go into work in that kind of state of mind constantly, and so Sam [Worthington, who plays Agent James Fitzgerald] and I had both committed and read Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto countless times — which is brilliant and mad and frustrating. It’s a wild ride. It’s a wild 54 pages, that’s for sure.”

“Manhunt: Unabomber” isn’t any lighter than “Game of Thrones,” but Tabby might be a little easier to play. Not only is she based on real women, but Castle Hughes is mimicking a real San Francisco accent. She praised voice coach Howard Samuelson for helping her with the Discovery Channel miniseries. It seems the Dornish accent was a bit harder to grasp.

“It was funny, when we came onto [‘Game of Thrones’], Pedro Pascal [who played Oberyn] had set the accent for the world of Dorne, and he was the only character we’d seen — him and Indira Varma [who plays Ellaria] — from Dorne at that point,” Castle-Hughes pointed out. “So they were able to kind of make it up and then we all had to kind of follow suit. Pedro naturally has a very buttery sound to his voice so it’s hard to emulate that.”

The actress noted that she hadn’t used her natural voice for work in about 10 years. With any luck, one of her post-“Game of Thrones” gigs will allow her to use her native New Zealand accent.

“Manhunt: Unabomber” premieres Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 9 p.m. EDT on the Discovery Channel.