Just as we speculated yesterday, George R.R. Martin has confirmed that actress Gwendoline Christie (lovegwendoline on Twitter) is now Brienne of Tarth! As he says in his confirmation post:
This was another one of those cases where there was hardly any debate. The day the first batch of auditions went up for the role, we looked at a dozen actresses who were reading for Brienne and one actress who WAS Brienne. Gwendoline gave a great reading, and her look was just perfect. No, when she auditioned, she did not look she does in the photo above. She came in looking… well, like Brienne.
Below is a sampling of Youtube videos featuring Christie.
The last starts with part of a scene from her role as the queen in Cymbeline, performed at the Barbican, and is followed by an interview.