Missandei is Daenarys Targaryen's closest female confidant, a woman who was freed from slavery by the Mother of Dragons and now serves as a sort of ambassador and translator. She's also one half of the show's sweetest and most improbable match ups, between her and the Unsullied leader Grey Worm. Nathalie Emmanuel has had a wonderful effect on the Daenarys story line (which, lets face it, sort of meanders during the later books), bringing a calming presence to all of the violence and turmoil that takes place on the show. The Essex-born actress got her first major role as Sasha Valentine on the long-running English soap opera Hollyoaks. She played a smart young girl with an addictive personality, and this being a soap opera, her character was involved in an unfathomably high number of melodramatic scenarios. She recreationally did heroin, overdosed, got mixed up in prostitution, was a victim of violent attacks, the list goes on and on. Emmanuel was on the show from 2006 to 2010, when her character was written off at the end of her contract, and the actress moved on to bigger and better things.