USA Today — Actors Lena Headey , Maisie Williams and Liam Cunningham from the popular TV series Game of Thrones traveled to Greece to tour refugee camps and speak on behalf of the International Rescue Committee. Fittingly, the hashtag for their visit was #RealmTotheRescue.
They and other cast members had previously recorded a video on behalf of the IRC in March.
“We met some absolutely beautiful families and happy, happy children who are stuck on their journey to get to other members of their family,” Cunningham said Thursday in a video posted to the IRC’s Twitter feed after a visit to Lesbos, where many refugees first come ashore in Europe.
“They just want a voice,” Headey said during a Friday interview with the Associated Press. “That’s what they all said to each of us — ‘tell my story, tell my story’ — and that’s what we’re going to do.”
She added, “These people can and want to contribute to the world. They are smart with education and skills and we’re not allowing them to. We just stop them (from) living. It can’t continue.”
Headey and Williams, who are British, and Cunningham, a native of Ireland, are calling on European leaders to ease restrictions on refugees trying to enter the continent, which factored into the successful Brexit campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the EU.
Headey, whose ruthless Cersei seized the Iron Throne in the finale, demonstrated she’s nothing like her alter ego, who once told son Joffrey that “everyone who isn’t us is an enemy.”
“You go to these camps, and people communicate with their hearts,” Headey said. “They have nothing left. It’s a connection that we’ve lost in our complacent society. So it’s incredibly moving, and uplifting, and inspiring, and horrifying. We need to re-find ourselves and not shut our doors. I’d like to just erase the complacency and fear and replace it with humanity”.
