Amanda Peet Calls Backlash Over Game Of Thrones Misogyny “Really Misplaced”

Game of Thrones has been the target of some backlash from fans over the course if its fifth season, after Sansa Stark's violent rape and Cersei Lannister's harrowing walk of shame left many feeling the beloved HBO program had crossed the line. But actress Amanda Peet, wife of show co-creator David Benioff, defended the series' creative choices, calling the outcry over its misogyny "really misplaced" in an interview with TheWrap. "They write some of the greatest female characters that are on television," Peet said proudly. "It’s a misogynist world, this world that George R.R. Martin created, but we have to experience it without thinking that people are condoning this." "It’s much more insidious to have middling, ancillary female roles where the women are not part of the plot — where they don’t advance anything," insisted the actress, who currently appears on another HBO program, Togetherness. "Wife roles, girlfriend roles, there are very few of those in Game of Thrones. If someone takes their clothes off and it’s a massive part of the plot? So be it." And considering women were only 12% of the on-screen protagonists in last year's top-grossing films, we have to say she has a point there. Peet does have one beef with her husband's marquee show, though: The shocking character death of this season's recent finale left her "furious." (Don't worry, those of you still catching up: We won't name names.) When the episode aired, Benioff was already back in Belfast working on the show's next season, but Peet made sure he still knew how she felt about the shocking turn of events: "I texted him and said, 'I’m single now,'" the actress joked.