Game of Thrones Star Teases That Cersei's Greatest Enemies May Be Hiding In Plain Sight

She may have armed the Faith Militant, but Eugene Simon warns that might be her biggest mistake. Will the army turn on her?

By Sydney Bucksbaum May 10, 2015 2:00 PMTags
Game of Thrones, Episode 503HBO

Cersei (Lena Headey) better watch her back!

The queen mother has been quick to do all she can on Game of Thrones this season to make sure she still has some form of power over Westeros after losing the title of "queen" to Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer), as she just married Cersei's only remaining son Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman). And desperate times call for desperate measures: Cersei decided to put her weight behind the Faith, and arm the growing religious group called the Sparrows to create an army called the Faith Militant to patrol King's Landing.

And the Faith Militant wasted no time in making their first move, rounding up and arresting all the gay men in the city...including Margaery's own brother Loras (Finn Jones).

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Cersei may be gloating about her new power grab now, but her own choices are about to come back to haunt her. And sooner than you think!

"Cersei is still trying to push her weight around, but she's lost her way, perhaps in the light of so many awful events that have happened in her life—the death of her child and father, the loss of her daughter to the folks in the south," Eugene Simon, who plays Faith Militant member Lancel Lannister, tells E! News. "She's a woman that is driven by pain and by hostility to those who wish to do her harm. In that, maybe she's lost her perspective on who her real enemies are, and who they could become. Whether or not the Faith are strong enough to oppose her, we'll have to see."

Remember: Lancel knows all of Cersei's dirty secrets...and we do mean all. Not only did he help get Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) drunk before the hunting trip that resulted in his death, he also was sleeping with Cersei (his own cousin) while Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) was missing. He knows all about her murderous schemes and incest habits.

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And that's definitely not a secret you want revealed in a time of religious marshal law.

"There are so many secrets that these protagonists hold that I honestly can't tell you if much of it will come to light," Simon says. "That's the tragedy of this story: so much of the wrongdoing will remain covered up. We'll have to see whether or not the revelation regarding all of Cersei's wrongdoings come to light."

But something Simon can reveal is that the Faith Militant have only just gotten started when it comes to their plans for King's Landing and all of Westeros.

"As more time goes by, the Faith Militant will need to evolve and make their ultimate purpose very clear," Simon says. "Right now, the Sparrows and the Faith Militant are saying, 'We serve the gods and the gods demand justice.' But what exactly that entails at this point is unclear. Lancel is going to be very intrinsic in demonstrating what exactly they're really about and what courses of action they're going to take."

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And while things in King's Landing are getting more and more serious as season five moves forward, we had to ask Simon if he was nervous about his character's fate despite the fact that Lancel is still alive in George R. R. Martin's books since, as this show has proven multiple times this season already, that doesn't exactly mean a character is safe from death!

"I have absolutely no fears because I have the gods on my side. I'm fine!" Simon says with a laugh. "No, the truth is, I'm not really that afraid of my character getting killed. The things I would miss most is just being Lancel and hanging out with such a wonderful team of actors and crew like a family. But valar morghulis. All men must die. I'm sure Lancel will die at some point, I don't know how, but he will. I just care about how he goes. The matter in which he goes is far more important, because we're all going to die. But I know nothing."

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Simon has only one request: that Lancel's inevitable death scene be as dramatic as possible.

"I suppose I'd like it to be a fairly dramatic death, really," Simon says with a laugh. "Who wouldn't want that? I'd like him to die demonstrating full and complete servitude to the Faith because I believe very strongly in Lancel that there is a reborn degree of strength in him and I would very much like that to be demonstrated in his final hours. And it's incredible to see just how violently the Faith Militant has come together, so you never know!"

Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.