Far more than Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, the prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a story about men. The characters in George R.R. Martin’s prequel novella The Hedge Knight, which showrunner Ira Parker adapted into this six-episode series, are almost exclusively male: knights and squires and kings and princes, plus the occasional crude commoner. HBO’s adaptation A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms addresses that problem via the usual HBO playbook, by dropping some sex workers into the mix, along with one preteen noble who only pops up for a few quips. The only female character in the show with any plot significance is also underwritten in the novella — so Martin himself stepped in to give the actor playing her some advice.
Tanselle, known as “Tanselle Too-Tall” for her statuesque build, is introduced in episode 2 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as the star of an elaborate traveling puppet show that’s camped out in Ashford Meadow, site of an upcoming jousting tourney. Series protagonists Dunk (Peter Claffey) and Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) are impressed with her show, and Dunk is clearly a bit taken by meeting an attractive, charismatic woman who isn’t dwarfed by his height. As they talk to Tanselle, it emerges that she’s an artist as well as a performer, which gives Dunk an excuse to draw her into his orbit, by commissioning her to paint a new sigil for his wooden shield.
But that isn’t a lot for Tanselle actor Tanzyn Crawford to build into a performance, even for a character who eventually has a pivotal role in the story. In conversation with Polygon ahead of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ premiere, Crawford explained what Martin himself told her about playing Tanselle, and what she brought to it herself.
“The first thing he said to me was that I was exactly what he pictured as Tanselle, which was a huge little confidence boost going in,” Crawford said. “He just gave me general information about how smallfolk carry themselves and how he thinks Tanselle would carry herself. […] He thinks maybe she’s not the most natural on stage, and she did prefer [doing] behind-the-scenes stuff. He thought she was quite self-assured. It wasn’t a lack of confidence, [she just has] a smaller personality that is still self-assured.”
Apart from that, Crawford said, she found the sparse description of the character in Martin’s The Hedge Knight freeing rather than challenging. “I think there’s maybe two or three sentences [in the novella] describing what she looks like, and maybe one on her personality,” she said. “I wanted to honor what is written, but I also wanted to bring my own aspects and twists on the character.”
The Hedge Knight has also been adapted as a graphic novel, by writer Ben Avery and penciler Mike S. Miller. The comics version of Tanselle is more thoroughly realized than the novella version — sleeker, coyer, and more assured. But Crawford didn’t want that version to influence her either.
“I didn’t want to just pick exactly from those comic-book things and just [re]create that, because I think that’s a version that’s been done,” she said. “I just wanted to do my version and my interpretation of it, and make her uniquely me.”
New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms air Sundays on HBO Max.
