Maggie Smith VS Diana Rigg - Smackdown of the Dowagers (Downton Abbey Vs Game of Thrones) by MADELEINE DAVIES (JEZEBEL)

Both of these tough old broads are sharp as a tack, cunning, gorgeous and played by real life dames (Dame Diana Rigg and Dame Maggie Smith). They also, as demonstrated by this fabulous supercut by Vulture, are queens of the quip. Take a look and then we'll all go get their faces tattooed on the tops of our feet so that when we sit with our legs extended it will look like they're sitting across from us and we can engage in some weird very normal puppet theater

READ MORE: http://jezebel.com/is-lady-olenna-the-dowager-countess-of-game-of-thrones-481294991

Game of Thrones: season three, episode two – Dark Wings, Dark Words, by Sarah Hughes (THE GUARDIAN)

Game of Thrones … Margaery and Joffrey enjoy some quality time together. Photograph: LFI/Photoshot
Spoiler Alert: This blog is published after Game of Thrones airs on HBO in the US on Sunday at 9pm ET. Do not read on unless you have watched episode two (which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 9pm). As ever, we are going to (hopefully) avoid book spoilers as well.

Click here for Sarah Hughes' season three, episode one blog


"Everything that's happened since then, all the horror that's come to my family is all because I couldn't love a motherless child"

I loved this episode, which was written by Vanessa Taylor, who also wrote two of my favourite episodes of last season, Garden of Bones and The Old Gods and the New. It had everything that makes Game of Thrones so addictive: the adept juggling of a number of plotlines, subtle character development and brooding hints of trouble to come. It was also an episode largely concerned with alliances: Jaime and Brienne formed a tentative bond based on a mutual love of swordplay, Robb realised that northern loyalty may not be set in stone and Commander Mormont called on the increasingly shaky ties of the Night's Watch to keep Sam alive, literally forbidding him to die. Elsewhere Margaery took the first steps towards breaking Joffrey's bond with Cersei, Bran made some interesting new friends and Arya ran into the Brotherhood without Banners. Best of all, however, was the heart-rending conversation between Catelyn and Talisa, which started by showing us the younger woman's desperate desire to integrate herself with her mother-in-law and ended by revealing the depth of Catelyn's guilt.

"There's no need to be frightened, we're only women here"

Enter Diana Rigg doing her best Countess of Grantham. Olenna Tyrell, aka the Queen of Thorns, is one of my favourite characters in the books and Rigg's spiky, imperious performance was a delight. The Tyrells understand the importance of PR more than most characters playing the game – as Cersei pointedly told Joffrey: "Margaery dresses like a harlot for a reason. She married Renly for a reason" – and their tea party showed how adept they are at hiding behind pretty words. That said it was hard not to feel for poor Sansa as her wide-eyed dream of friendship was crushed by the realisation that it was all just politics, again.

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/apr/08/game-of-thrones-season-three-episode-two-dark-wings-dark-words

Diana Rigg, Ciaran Hinds: 'Game of Thrones:' A Look at Season 3's New Faces and Characters (YAHOO)

By Carrie Bell | Yahoo! TV – Mon, Mar 25, 2013 1:03 PM PDT

The cast dishes on Ciaran Hinds, Diana Rigg, and (spoiler!) a giant arriving in Westeros this season.

Helen Sloan/HBO - Mance Raydar (Ciaran Hinds) and Lady Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg) in "Game of Thrones" Season 3.

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains storyline and character spoilers for the third season of "Game of Thrones."

With 27 series regulars and hundreds of guest stars, day players, and extras wandering in and out of Westeros and points beyond, keeping track of who's who on "Game of Thrones" is almost as big a feat as planning the Battle of Blackwater Bay. That task isn't going to get any easier when Season 3, which was shot by three units across five countries and promises plenty of fresh faces, begins March 31 on HBO.

Arguably, the most major addition to the cast was Ciaran Hinds. One, his resumé is as respected as Tywin Lannister's and almost as long as the feared coming winter, with "Rome," "Harry Potter," "Political Animals," and "There Will Be Blood" among the highlights. Two, he is portraying Mance Rayder, the ex-Night's Watchman who united 90 clans into one Wildling army currently moving in on the Wall. Rose Leslie (Ygritte) admitted at the junket last week in Beverly Hills to being a tad starstruck as "we've been watching him from a young age. Phenomenal."

Kit Harington, whose Jon Snow is trying to infiltrate the camp and must get Rayder to trust him, was also in awe. "He's a wonderful, wonderful man, and for someone who hadn't read the books and hadn't even seen the show when he joined and did his first few scenes, he nailed the character. That's the mark of the man's genius and genius of the writing."

READ MORE: http://tv.yahoo.com/news/-game-of-thrones---a-look-at-season-3-s-new-faces-and-characters-200346280.html

Diana Rigg: All the new Cast Members of GAME OF THRONES (VIDEO)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpSDSgChsaI&feature=player_embedded#!

Daniel Radcliffe on 'Extras', with Diana Rigg. Very funny.

DIANA RIGG

Judi Dench got one. Maggie Smith got one. Helen Mirren got one. Now it’s Diana Rigg’s turn to have a DVD set devoted to her work for the BBC, a five-disc box called, yes, Diana Rigg at the BBC.
Like the rest of her career – a witty secret-agent series (The Avengers), success with Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard onstage, a failed U.S. sitcom (Diana), a terrific horror comedy opposite Vincent Price (Theatre of Blood), a stint introducing Mystery! and a role as the only Bond girl to marry James Bond (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) – her BBC work is all over the map.

 

She gets serious opposite Anthony Hopkins in Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf (1982). She plays a put-upon, lovelorn woman hoping for rural peace in Unexplained Laughter (1989). She takes a supporting role as a Nazi-sympathizing Bavarian baroness in 1958 in the black comedy-drama Genghis Cohn (1993, based on a Romain Gary novel), trying to seduce Robert Lindsay as a former SS officer haunted by the ghost of a Polish comedian he ordered shot (Anthony Sher).
She stars in five episodes of the Mrs. Bradley Mysteries (1998-2000), as a wealthy amateur sleuth in the 1920s whose uninhibited ways and cozy relationship with her chauffeur (Neil Dudgeon) scandalize those whose mysteries she is kind enough to solve. If the scripts aren’t up to those of, say, David Suchet’s outings as Hercule Poirot, they do give Rigg the chance to deliver caustic asides to the camera and to savour Adela Bradley’s better lines. “I’m really reluctant to do this, George,” she says while removing a stocking so it can be used as a fan belt. “The feminine virtue of self-sacrifice is entirely foreign to my nature.”
But the real treat of this five-disc set is the 1977 series Three Piece Suite. Each of the six half-hour episodes is broken into three sketches written by established writers. All of them star Rigg in a whirl of accents and characters: brassy young American actress, suburban housewife fearing she has committed adultery, long-suffering wife of a ranting husband.
The nature of the sketches must have seemed old-fashioned even then, in the wake of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. They are playlets rather than skits, wry character studies rather than joke machines. In a recent 20-minute interview included here, Rigg calls the series “a mixed bag. And as I recollect, it didn’t go down with the critics all that well, although I adored doing it.”
The joy is in seeing Rigg tackle so many roles with such élan, whether in solo spots or playing opposite such actors as Bob Hoskins and, as that ranting husband, John Cleese. Highlights include a parody of Noel Coward’s Private Lives with Rigg as Elizabeth Taylor (with whom she would soon co-star in the misbegotten film version of A Little Night Music) and Tony Britton as Richard Burton.
At the end of the series, she recites the entire closing credits. She really has done everything.