“I do understand that, sir — reality versus fantasy,” she said, in the withering deadpan of a woman who has endured her share of mansplaining over the years.

Ms. Headey is matter-of-fact about “the boys’ club” that dominates the entertainment industry. “You grow up in it, and you learn to infiltrate it,” she said, though sometimes it’s not so easy. As a young actress, she faced pressure to sleep with powerful men, she said, adding that “I never played the game.” On later jobs like “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” a short-lived Fox series in which she played the title role, “my voice was very quickly ignored and my opinions were very much not wanted,” she said.

These days things are different — starring on a global phenomenon will do that for you. As she plots out her post-“Thrones” path, she is using the opportunity to make sure she is the one shaping the message.

As evil queen roles come rolling in, she is instead developing her own films. These include an adaptation of “H Is for Hawk,” the Helen Macdonald memoir, which she is starring in and producing with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, as well as a dream project about Grace O’Malley, a female pirate in 16th-century Ireland. She also hopes to create more opportunities for female filmmakers, she said, and also do some directing herself.

She is less excited about simply acting for hire but did recently shoot “The Flood,” a small indie film about the refugee crisis in Europe, an issue she cares about deeply, and more surprising, a wrestling dramedy with Dwayne Johnson called “Fighting With My Family.” Both films are due out next year.

Otherwise she plans to finish moving into her house and generally take it easy until filming starts this fall on the final season of “Game of Thrones.” Like everyone else on the show, she faces an uncertain fate, but at least will finally learn who winds up on the Iron Throne in the end.

“It can’t be me because I’m already there,” she said. “So I’m [expletive].”