Home > Season 1 > Episode Screen Captures > 1.08 The Pointy End

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Home > Season 1 > Episode Screen Captures > 1.06 A Golden Crown

After nearly a week of wandering the the more civilized portions of England whilst on vacation (or “on holiday” as a proper Englishman might say), and following days of expected touring of such places as Oxford University (historic), the Tower of London (impressive), British Parliament and the House of Commons (eye-poppingly impressive), and Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum (the one in Hollywood is better), a sore-footed but forthright FaBio met the actor John Bradley in a train depot in central London.

John Bradley (born John Bradley West) was indeed a welcoming sight to me, still clearly an American fish out of water. The London tubes can be a little confounding to a modern-day Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (I’d hate to think of how I’d do in a city where the pervading language isn’t, you know, English) and I left early enough that I knew I’d be on time. And I was still nearly late. But there stood John, hands stuffed in the pockets of his over-coat, waiting calmly and smiling placidly.

You almost expect John to have that same self-conscious mien as the beloved character he plays, with the nervous hitch to his words, the slumped-forward shoulders, and all the other Samwell Tarly affectations. (I suppose that’s why it’s called “acting.”) But what I got was a very bright young man, confident in his shoes, casually but smartly dressed in a dark gray longcoat, with a red and black thin-striped scarf ’round his throat and tucked in front. His hair was Samwell-styled short, but his face clean-shaven, which takes approximately three years off of an already youthful look. He could easily pass for someone still attending college. He shook my hand with vigor and proceeded to lead a merry chase from the train station to and through the vibrant energy of London’s Soho—a place, perhaps not too oddly, much akin to New York’s SoHo. It’s a neighborhood with a buzzy feel to it, only slightly urban and a bit more manic than anything I would consider overtly trendy or hipster (though don’t tell that to all the Japanese fashion bloggers; the bustling Soho streets are occasionally made to stop by Chibi-like shouts of glee as young twentysomething Japanese girls occasionally force Londoners in odd or edgy clothes to pose for pictures).

But it’s here John takes me, to the Soho Theatre Bar where we can conduct our interview with a modicum of quiet surrounding us. John knows the Soho Theatre well; he did his drama showcase there while in school, and even auditioned for the role of Sam directly across the street. This is clearly a performer’s nook.

I sat down with John and we conversed about a half-gazillion things, including music, English football, gambling with minors, Loras bloody Tyrell, Kit Harington, Ricky Gervais, and yes, the color indigo, amongst many, many other things. A fun time was had.

By now most of you know my interview style: haphazardly off-the-cuff, long-winded, and prone to tangents that make no sense. It’s really more ‘A conversation with…’ than an interview. John did his best to keep me on track. This young man acquits himself well, and it’s easy to say he’s an “old soul,” mature beyond his years, but that’s only catching a facet of John Bradley. He can carry on a serious conversation about acting, his friends, his family… and subtly add something off the cuff that makes you pause, wondering if he’s “having a go” at you. His wit is subtle and even sly; there may be times during the interview in which you might ask, “Was he serious?” The answer is “Usually not, but perhaps a little.” He uses his big brown puppydog eyes to their utmost effect, his eyebrows dancing this way and that. This is a pretty damned smart guy, though he is prone to using the word “incredible” a bit more than most. His inflections rise near the end of some of his words, so when you read “Yeah,” it’s not said in a monotone American way, but bouncy, youthful British, like “YeAH,” almost like a question. If you want to imagine how a typical conversation sounds, just close your eyes and imagine: “I always wanted to be a wizard.” Pause for laughter. “Well I did!”

Ultra-short bio: John Bradley West came bouncing into the world in September of 1988. Born and raised in Manchester, England, a home he hearkens to often, John attended the Manchester School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University (which used to simply be called “The MMU” before someone decided to be all official). He started there at age 19 after his formal schooling, and that seems to be the way a lot of attendees go, though not as a rule; many others don’t join until much later in their lives. (John mentioned many people join in their 30?s, which is great for character diversity.) He graduated and, three months later, landed the role that would make most Game of Thrones fans fall in love with him.

Here is the interview:

FaB: Let’s go to the beginning. What inspired you to be an actor?

JB: I think I was inspired to be a performer before I was inspired to be an actor. There was just something about being in a different world. I found certain images and certain visual motifs very interesting. I was obsessed with Oliver. The musical. And what I used to do—and my dad still loves to bring this up, to my eternal embarrassment—I used to disappear for a while, when there was family around, and I used to cobble together a costume from various different things I could find. My mum’s coat, my dad’s work boots, just get myself some props… none of it was safe, I’d grab it and, completely unannounced, I’d walk in and start doing a little scene.

Inspired!

It sounds quite awkward. But there was something about just being able to connect with people. And I felt connected with [performing] before I really knew what was going on. With comedians and with show business. It was more show business than art.

So it was live performance at an early age for you.

I think so, yeah! It was a way to find attention, like many do amongst other brothers and sisters.

Are you the youngest? Middle child?

I was the youngest of two. My sister sister is 13 years older than I. So it wasn’t really a brother/sister relationship. It was was a relationship of greater respect. More like an elderly female relative, like an aunt. Even though she was 14, 15, I saw that as incredibly sophisticated.

So you were performing for her as well.

For everyone, yeah.

So once you got past your formative years, did your family still support it? The acting. Did they encourage?

Definitely. And they were always very keen to come and see what I was up to. But I stopped them for a long time.

[FaB laughs...] Why?

Because… even back then I was… well, I don’t want to say I was “method,” because that is ridiculous at that age. I mean, I was eleven. But even just to be able to create a character for yourself, and to be involved in it, this unreal thing… I didn’t want any trace of my real life to be there. If you understand that.

I do! I write under a pen name. My mother asks me all the time, “Why don’t you write under your own name?” Like I’m not proud of it. And I’m perfectly proud of it, and of what I do, but in a sense I kind of create this character when I write. I’m more bombastic. I suppose I’m bombastic in real life as well, but…

[FaB Note: This is also because if too many people know FaB's real name they would Facebook him, and he kind of hates it when people Facebook him, since the entirety of his insane family is on Facebook. Need to keep those lunatics locked away for as long as humanly possible.]

It’s kind of comforting to be able to duck behind something else.

It’s like a wall.

Yeah, and you can blame a lot of stuff on it.

[FaB Laughs.]

There are a lot of stand-up comedians who say exactly that. “If I go on, presenting this character, I can say things that are so objectionable…” Though if people don’t understand I’m playing a character it can finish me completely. And I think it’s kind of that. One thing I was told in drama school was that I never really gave myself over. Not completely. Certain actors don’t do that. People like DeNiro… they take bits of themselves, put bits of themselves in without changing themselves completely. But with Shakespearean characters that wouldn’t work. You need to create something completely different. And I was told to give myself over more to the world of it, and not kind of… look on it with the kind of cynical way I do.

You’ve done Shakespeare.

In drama school, yeah.

What’s your favorite?

I think the characters in the comedies are better, and the stories in the tragedies are better. For an actor like me… because I’m never going to play Hamlet. [He has a bit of an awkward grin.] It’s going to be more Bottom, it’s going to be more Toby Belch. So those are the characters who stand out to me. But story wise… well, Game of Thrones is like that, with its psychology and its motives. About a man whose elevated to a position, and then he slowly starts to become paranoid, realizing where he is, very worried about what his future is going to hold, worrying about what’s going on behind his back. And that’s MacBeth.

Yes! When I spoke with Lena Headey, we talked about MacBethian themes.

Queen Cersei: Very MacBethian.

Talk to me about your first day on set. Very first day.

It was… incredibly daunting. The good thing I can say about it was, my introduction, my first filmed scene, was the one where Grenn dives. He falls. And in that scene I didn’t speak at all. Which kind of took the pressure off a little bit. I didn’t feel like I had to act, every single second of it. I wasn’t really the main focus, which took the pressure off, learning lines and such, and I could just sort of learn a bit more sneakily than if I had to go and learn lines. It was my first day of filming ever. My first day in front of a camera. The last bit of acting I’d done was my final show in drama school, three months earlier. So I just didn’t know what to expect.

What was the biggest surprise?

I was surprised by how much time it took to do everything. But I think that’s universal for anybody who steps in front of a camera for the first time.

Well the old saying is, “You’re not paid to act—you’re paid to wait to act.”

That’s pretty much true, yeah. The good thing was I had met… well, obviously Kit [Harington], Mark [Stanley], and Joe [Altin] and Luke [McEwan]. And Owen [Teale], briefly before that. We did a fight rehearsal. So we’d already grown attached to each other in that time. So that was nice. Also, Kit had done the pilot, but he was new to film as well. Joe has done all sorts of film.

Before Game of Thrones, I could have sworn I saw him get his throat cut in a Viggo Mortensen movie. [True fact! Josef Altin played ill-fated Ekrem in Eastern Promises.]

He’s been in a good amount of films, and he’s nice. So it’s an excellent thing to have someone with that kind of experience in the dirt with us on our level. But Mark and Luke were rather new to it as well, so it was kind of nice with all of us feeling our way through together. They’re really nice lads too. It can be nerve-wracking without that support. Could feel like you’re just being thrown into the deep end.

I loved the scene where Rast is finally browbeaten into not fighting Sam… he just sort of, in an annoyed way, bats Sam’s clumsy thrust aside. And Sam loses the sword and has to chase it. The look on Rast’s face…

Jon’s special little form of intimidation. Works wonders. Luke played that well.

I like Luke. I follow him on Twitter. He comes across every so often as sort of down on himself. But it’s done in this funny way, he’s quite charming.

It’s the Liverpool thing. People from Liverpool have got a certain kind of humor about them. And he’s the epitome of that. Self-depricating. He’s confident enough in his ability to be funny that he is self-depricating. Someone who is genuinely down on themselves probably wouldn’t put it over.

So that’s Liverpool basically representing Liverpool.

That’s Luke.

[FaB segues to the topic of Samwell's introduction...]

In my initial scene you don’t know what to make of [Sam].

Yeah, just some big guy wandering in and getting his ass kicked.

I tried to play in that first scene, a man who… well, he’s clearly got a lot about him, as we later see, but he comes into this completely alien place, and he’s literally paralyzed by fear. So he can’t get anything of his personality across at all. And so I think that’s why people, when he first came in, the other Night’s Watch people—and Thorne especially—saw him as completely useless. Because he was far too intimidated. There’s nothing positive coming across at all. That’s what we were going for at least.

My view is, well, from Sam’s view: he comes into a place where he sees humanity lowered to its most base, violent, disgusting levels. And he’s been thrown here. And now he has to fight with his fists, and do all the things his father unsuccessfully tried to beat into him. It didn’t take, for all these years. And if he couldn’t do it for love of his family, how is he expected to do it here with these people in the freezing bitter cold, you know?

Yeah!

It’s such an interesting character. And a lot of people agree with me: you nailed it, man. You won George, Dave, and Dan, and everyone at the auditions, and I really think you won the massive majority of “us.”

That’s very nice, thank you.

Did you feel, when you read the script, “I can do this.” Or did you feel, “This is really gonna be tough.”

I felt that… because he changes so quickly, kind of [tough]. I had four scenes in episode four. And from the first scene to the last scene, you see a complete range of what this guy’s about. He goes from feeling incredibly weak, to a man who feels strong enough to tell somebody what’s going on. He’s gaining confidence already. And by the final scene he’s already found his place. Can even speak his mind a bit.

“A bit nippy.”

“A bit nippy.” Exactly, yeah. I loved it. That scene, scrubbing the tables, it wasn’t in initially. I already knew the scene on [top of] the Wall from the audition. I thought, “This is going to be so interesting, to make this guy…” In his barest form, he’s quite an unlikeable guy, in his first scene, especially. You think, “What are you doing, why are you putting up with this?” There’s a bit where I get knocked down for the first time… and Thorne goes, “Get up,” and Sam tries to get up. He doesn’t have the balls to not get up. He’s getting up and taking it again. And you [the audience' just say, "Don't do it! For God's sake, don't do it!" So it's quite hard to get people to sympathize for him. Because quite often when you get that, people go, "Oh, just leave him. He's a lost cause."

And this is a testament to how well it's written; the writers were able to put that [the audience's reaction], on Pyp and Grenn. It’s like they said, “We’re gonna have that reflected in their eyes.” Because… well, Grenn, he’s not the brightest lad in the world, because he thinks cowardice is almost contagious.

[John laughs...] Yeah!

[FaB does a horrible rendition of Grenn...] “Well now they’re gonna think we’re cowards too!” But there was a moment, and I wanted to compliment Josef on this as well, where Thorne reminds everybody that the Wall isn’t a place for coddling boys. You’re all going to be men of the Night’s Watch, and this is the man who will be guarding your back. And Pyp does get a look of, “Oh crap.” Even though he’s sympathizing with Sam, there’s that ‘oh crap’ look.

I saw that moment! It was very powerful.

It’s very good. The Jon / Sam relationship so powerful… so integral to the story. Tell us a little bit about how you get along with Kit in real life, because it seems as though you both get along very well.

Incredibly well. We spent a lot of time… I wouldn’t say actively trying to make friends with each other, because that would feel unnatural… but any spent time we spent together we got on fantastically. It wasn’t contrived at all, wasn’t like [producers] were forcing us to spend time together. And I felt incredibly comfortable working with him. Because he’s so good. And one of the most important things that an actor can have in a scene is that he listens. That scene on the Wall: he’s got a close-up, and he’s just listening. And listening is incredibly hard to do. You have to feel incredibly comfortable with an actor to listen properly. Because the temptation is to say, “Well now I have to say something,” but Kit really does listen. He’s superb at that. His face, without saying anything at all, can convey a whole wealth of feeling, of sentiment. There’s nothing worse in real life, talking to somebody and realizing they’re not listening. And to act with that is even more unnerving.

Because other people are going to see that non-reaction.

Right. And it doesn’t matter [with Kit] if the camera’s on or not. He acts every single second of it out. He’s superb. And he’s lovely as well.

[FaB mentions Kit's former---and lauded---role in War Horse...]

I didn’t get to see it live, but I saw the documentary. Even there you can tell what a gifted actor he is, not just an actor, but a person. And he connects with whomever he’s with, being a person or a mechanical horse. He’s just got a certain kind of charisma about him that makes him a perfect choice for a hero. He makes Jon Snow a hero.

Sam has heroic qualities. But you’re not supposed to see them right away. Sam, he’s a hero forced by circumstance. You either react one way or you die.

Yes, of course. The best kind of hero is a hero without ego. And Sam is a hero without ego.

Zero ego!

No ego at all. Sometimes it’s braver if you take it than it is to stand up to it. Because if you stand up for it, you’re trying to get yourself out of pain. And if you take it, you’re accepting it. That’s a lot braver, in a sense.

Sam definitely accepts who he is. And I think Jon is drawn to that immediately. Jon Snow has always felt there is something he has to be. And here’s this noble’s son, who has already accepted who he is. Sam says, “Well this is who I am.” I think Jon sees that as a form of bravery in and of itself.

That’s exactly right.

You get to work with Peter Vaughn.

Ohhhh yes!

What is that like? Because, lord willing we get season 3 and season 4… Sam and Maester Aemon get some really good scenes together. You sort of have to acclimate yourself to working regularly with one of the most respected performers there is.

He’s stunning. In the 70?s and 80?s, he was where people went for certain kinds of characters. He was in a sitcom called Porridge, set in a prison… one of the best beloved sitcoms in British history. And he was incredible in it. And he played a kind-of gangster who, unofficially, took charge of the whole prison. It was kind of a sinister part for a comedy. His character had this extremely sharp wit… really, he was someone I’ve been dying to work with. He was in a scene with me where he spoke to me but I couldn’t speak back. I was dying to speak back. It was amazing, one of those pinch yourself moments. With James Cosmo as well. Legend. And these people are in charge of us at Castle Black, but you sort of feel like they are in charge of us in performance as well.

I’m sure that natural sort of hierarchy does kind of establish itself. Because they have the experience. Not just as their characters, but as actors.

We’d get incredibly worried about this or that, the young actors I mean, but they’ve experienced so much, they just treat it like a day’s work. And it will be great if any of us are able to get that far, where acting just becomes complete second nature. They’re incredible.

Well you have to think they began the same as you. Mark Addy, Sean Bean, all the stuff they’ve done… at some point in time, they were where you are at, where Kit is at. And you can only hope that you can have that kind of longevity.

Yeah.

The ball is really rolling. I just got to watch episode 5, and that was my favorite episode thus far. [Pause.] Uh, even though you weren’t in it. Sorry you weren’t in it!

[Dryly...] Clearly the reason you enjoyed it. A distinct lack of me.

[FaB is laughing. He accidentally kicks the table like a klutz...] It really does get better and better.

Every week, [the momentum] just keeps rolling. Different people are always coming into it. It can’t get stale. There’s something new. There’s always a reason to watch… it’s not repetitive at all. It can’t possibly get repetitive.

Completely true. I do feel bad for people who only latch onto one character. Because you only really get a little bit of that one person. I feel sorry for people who fixate on only, say, the Hound, “He’s not getting enough lines, he’s not doing enough this or that.” As a storyteller myself, and from a critic standpoint, I know you just can’t tell it the same way.

It’s true. If somebody’s writing a novel, they can spend pages and pages—and in real time hours and hours—just creating a scene, and on screen it can be seen in one second. And all the details there. A camera is totally in charge. You as the audience can give yourself over to a camera, because a camera is telling what you are looking at. In a play, you have character stage left and character stage right, and you have to choose who you look at. A camera makes the decisions for you. A film audience takes a more passive role, and a theatre audience is incredibly active in how they experience it.

[Talk shifts to the difference between television and film in book adaptations...]

We have ten hours to get this [show] across. That’s why any suggestion of a movie is ridiculous.

Yeah, I sometimes still don’t know how they did The Lord of the Rings in three movies.

Three epic movies.

Excellent movies! But it’s still impossible to do Game of Thrones that way. When the news came across that it was HBO… we rejoiced. Many of us believed this was the only way they could do this. With all the violent, horrible… stuff. And the sex… Unless they just completely dumb it down, they would not be able to tell it properly. So we were very happy. Have you gotten any feedback from family members regarding the adult nature of the show?

It’s kind of unsaid. Which I’d prefer for it to remain unsaid. I just think that… well, Mark [Addy], in the BAFTA presentation, talked about the Dany and Khal Drogo, and the horrific nature of those sex scenes, and it’s necessary to kind of convey the kind of man that he is and the kind of world that it is. And it’s not… nothing in it is salacious. I think it’s entirely necessary and entirely justified, but I think people have an automatic gut reaction when they see something like this. As if [saying] “I’m supposed to disapprove of it.” People think putting sex and violence into art equals dumbing down, when it’s really dumbing it up. And some sectors in film use it as pornography. I’m not talking about pornography. I’m talking about a sexual situation that’s put into a film to enhance something, to explain something. And I just think, if you can’t accept that, in its context, it shows a degree of immaturity. Which means you should probably stay away from it.

You said it perfectly. You just said it all.

[Here comes that half-smile again, and he murmurs graciously, jokingly agreeing that he is, indeed, fantastic...] It’s okay.

The fifth episode has a gay scene… and there was… I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was, by the reaction. Some people were incensed. “How could they make those two characters gay?!” And my own reaction was, “Did you not read the books? George did everything but scream it from the rafters!” And the scene itself is not a salacious or disgusting scene. I found it, for the most part, tastefully done.

Context is all.

They’re just showing a relationship. Granted it’s a secret relationship… It’s not something either of these characters can do in public. It was a playful, private scene.

The books can put that [secrecy] across incredibly subtly… whereas in a visual image, a film, it’s very hard to do that. It has to be manifested in some sort of physical action, because otherwise, just to rely on Shakespearean style first person exposition… it can’t happen.

I think they’ve done a remarkable job. There’s a certain level of exposition that kind of needs to happen. They have placed a lot of exposition within conversations, within love scenes. The one with Viserys and Doreah, the slave, in the tub, talking about the dragons. And they’re giving you a history of the dragons while at the same time giving you an interesting visual to look at. I thought it was well done. But for some people, it was just too much for them!

Exactly. Yeah, I think a lot of people… when things are done like that and they [react badly]… I think it shows something about them. [He then adds with mock caution...] Not to take any sides on this debate, of course. I’m very careful not to do that. But in terms of “We can’t look at that while listening to that.” The juxtaposition frightens a lot of people, because they can’t compute being given two pieces of information at once. Being given the visual, and being given the contextual. And that’s fine. It means they can take away what they want from it. Which is nice as well. I mean, I used to watch programs when I was a child that I enjoyed for a completely different reason than I do now. And when you can get a series that can communicate to so many people on so many different levels, it’s great. You shouldn’t shy away from that at all.

I like what they’re doing with the series. All my personal complaints are the “not long enough” scenes, not showing the dogs—the wolves—enough, et cetera, though I also understand there are always time constraint issues. And I do understand the Northern Inuit dogs were a little difficult to work with as well.

They could be difficult, yeah.

Did you have any direct working contact with the dog that played Ghost?

Yeah! I… well, I should have had more than I did. If you know what I mean.

[I do.]

But I think whenever the character of Ghost is involved, I think, because of various elements, he’s had to be used fairly liberally. But I think what he does do is very exciting. When he attacks Rast, that’s an amazing visual, because you’ve almost kind of forgotten about him.

[Short FaB rant about how they could have perhaps included one bloody shot of Ghost on the road to the Wall, and that would have staved off so many of the 'No Ghost' complaints...] However, if the primary complaint people have about the show is “Each episode ends before I want it to,” then that’s in effect a compliment!

The worst thing you can do is outstay your welcome, I think. And I’ve been to plays where I’ve said, “I enjoyed that but it would have been all the better had it ended an hour ago.”

There’s a question: When you’re onstage, can you feel a restless audience? Is there a ripple effect? A dissatisfaction you can sense? Before there’s any outward acting-out?

You do sense it. It’s very easy to sense. We were lucky in that we did a large variety of things. We did comedy… but we also did Chekovian dramas and things. We did Three Sisters in third year. And it went on for three-and-a-half hours. And the worst thing that could happen actually happened. We took the curtain call at about 10 to 11 at night. When we bowed, a woman shouted “Hooray!” Literally shouting it. Not a cheer.

A jeer.

Yeah.

But what can you do from there but have a laugh about it, right?

Well except we had one more night to do it. Which isn’t… good. “Hooray.” I’ll never forget that. It’s a hard feeling when things aren’t working out. You put a lot into it, the rehearsal, and then… yeah. Like with a comedy you have “bullet points,” and you think one will work, like, “This will get it back on track,” and then it doesn’t, and you have three or four more…

It sounds like one of those trains-you-can’t-stop scenarios.

Exactly like that. And that’s the difference with TV. Because the director [can control things] and the editor, he can control a lot. In a sense, a lot of the actor’s work is done by the editor. But onstage, it’s left to you. Just you. There’s no technological bridge between you and the audience. In theatre, all the technique, all the things you can do is all in your body. There’s techniques [you learn] that help you with your voice, with your body, your core strength, et cetera. And it’s all very inward. In film and TV, the technique is more outward-looking. It’s about how you relate to the space around you, hitting your mark, having your body in the right position; move a little bit to the right, a little bit to the left; don’t look this way, look him in the eye there. It’s more about how you relate to your surroundings rather than how your body relates to itself.

And the camera catches every single twitch as well. Every facial movement.

Yeah.

But on stage you can’t… [FaB gestures in a grandiose sort of way.]

Of course. You’d look ridiculous.

Something I was always curious about: the mindset of getting into the acting profession. It’s not a job you actively look to retire. Whereas every other job, just about, you look toward the day you can comfortably retire. Performing, you don’t want to be retired!

No!

So you’re kind of entering a profession in which you literally want to work the entirety of your life.

That’s true!

It’s odd!

It is a little odd. But I’ve always thought there were two different kinds of actors. There are ones who work toward a peak of artistic endeavor, and actors who set out towards reaching a certain level of fame. And having worked with proper actors now, I think most actors are concerned with art first. And there you concern yourself with making yourself a better and better and better actor. You never retire, mentally. You have to keep pushing yourself on, because you’re never as good as you could be. Whereas people who just want to get into movies… It’s quite easy to get into movies. Staying in movies is hard.

That’s true.

Some actors, they get to a certain level of fame. And they just stop kind of… putting the effort in, and they treat acting as a sort of personal appearance. And those people have already retired. They retired from art.

They’re just pulling paychecks.

Yeah, they’ve retired from whatever initial ambition they had.

[FaB begins script talk...] You said earlier you don’t have any scripts yet from season two.

Nope. But I probably wouldn’t say if I had. But I haven’t. I wish I had!

You can always tell your friendly neighborhood friends at Winter-Is-Coming.net when you do! Because you always come to our site, right? [FaB is leading the witness...] Probably four or five times a day, don’t you, John? [Really leading...] Perhaps more.

Oh, yeah! [He's mock-seeking an escape with his eyes.] Really, I do. [Then more truthfully...] I actually click on any links I see on Twitter. [John follows @WiCnet on Twitter. Thank you, ser!]

[Well, really... he should be following @Axechucker on Twitter, since FaB is way cooler than anyone else who writes for the site. Readers included. Bunch of dorks, really.]

[NOTE: At this point in the interview, the quiet bar in which we're seated becomes not so quiet, as Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" is being blasted from the bar loudspeaker system. And it's a fine song, on its own, really. I like it. However they have it on repeat. I think we end up listening to "Rolling In The Deep" fifteen times. And let's be frank: no Adele song is that good.]

[We talk a bit about his work with Tom Fontana and John Doman in his Borgias project from Canal+, not to be confused with Showtime's The Borgias. FaB asks John about the differences between Samwell Tarly and and his Borgia character, Giovanni...]

I think that there’s a lot more to be read and researched about an historical character. But the fact is, a lot of that might just be conjecture. And there’s a lot of conflicting reports on people. With Samwell, you’re not going to get conflicting reports. The guy who created this character is still muckin’ about.

Yes he is! Ol’ George, muckin’ about!

So any questions that need to be asked can at least be fielded to somebody who has an absolute definitive answer. You’re not going to get a conflicting answer from George with regard to Samwell. So in terms of that, Samwell is somehow more real than Giovanni, because the head that he came out of is still open to question. And the actual Giovanni, and the people who knew Giovanni, are gone completely. So I can’t ask anything. But at the same time I have more freedom to create a character, knowing that nobody has anything to compare it to. The characters are similar in that both are from good families and both were sent into an environment that they’re not accustomed to, and not really ready for. The main difference probably is… Giovanni’s definitely braver. And braver with authority. The bit where Thorne comes into the mess hall and talks about eating me… [John gives FaB a bit of a leery look...] He [Sam] says nothing. I think Giovanni would at least have the balls to walk off.

I sort of got the feeling Sam gave his “A bit nippy” response just before he realized who he was talking to.

Yeah! [John seems pleased that translated.]

Was “A bit nippy” in the script?

It was in the script.

It sounds like a John Bradleyism.

No, no, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t dare! [By his mischievous look, it is clear he's probably going to "dare" sometimes soon...] Another difference between the two is… Samwell… even though he had a terrible time at home, he’s still just lost a lot of power very, very quickly, coming to where he has. And Giovanni’s gained a lot of power very, very quickly. And they have a completely different mentality. So it’s quite easy to distinguish between the two.

None of us really know Sam’s ultimate fate. What are some of the things that you hope will happen, or will be his direction?

I just hope that he becomes a man with his own identity. As opposed to a man who is constantly comparing himself to other people. I would hope one day people would be comparing themselves favourably to Samwell. At the moment he’s living in the shadow of everybody. He’s inferior to his dad, and then he goes to the Wall, where Alliser Thorne makes him feel inferior. And he feels that he’s inferior to Jon in the scene we had where he says he’s a virgin. And I’m like, “It’s obvious that I’m a virgin, and I don’t believe you are for a second.” So I hope he finds an identity. And he’s comfortable.

Good. I don’t know how much you want to be spoiled with regard to the next few books, but… His travels are… he goes this way, and that way, and that way… and then he goes that way. And then… Well you’re going to see so many different sets if this thing continues.

Yeah, good. Good!

And congratulations on the success. The critical raves. It’s being received almost better than we [the fans] hoped. Have you been reading some of these positive reviews?

Well, yeah. Hard not to, just out of curiosity.

How much do you want? I know some people say that too much cheering can cloud the senses.

It can, yeah. Too much. And a bad review is welcomed as much, or even more so than a good one.

That’s oddly true. People are always telling… well, like Finn Jones… he gets compliments on his looks all the time. And out of the blue someone told him his hair was hideous. And he loved it.

I saw that on Twitter. Finn knows how pretty he is. God, if he doesn’t know…

We all can’t be Loras Tyrell, my friend.

Well if everyone was Finn Jones, then Finn Jones wouldn’t really be all that special. And he is.

We want Finn Jones to stay Finn Jones. He’s a funny dude.

He’s a lovely lad, Finn, yeah. I met him. The first time we met, we’d just finished a read-through. And we were in a green room. [He pause. And then he says, rather slyly... ] I’m sure he won’t mind me telling this.

You should tell. Either way.

I was playing cards with Finn, Sophie, and Maisie.

[That image alone kind of slays...] Playing cards with the kids.

Oh, with the kids, yeah. Sounds about right.

You made off with a couple quid.

Well, no! Believe it or not. I had to go out to answer my phone, leaving two really nice kids. And Finn. Alone with my cards. [Pause...] They rigged my deck while I was using the phone!

Well, you didn’t see who. Initially you might think it’s Finn, I bet. But it could have been Maisie…

Judging by the expression on his face it was Finn.

But you don’t know. Not for a fact. We know it wasn’t Sophie; she’s an angel.

Yes she is.

I am a known Sansa supporter. So it could not have been Sophie. [Pause...] It was Maisie.

It wasn’t, it was Finn! Don’t try to get Finn out of trouble. [Scoffing...] Loras bloody Tyrell. Deck-rigging!

Hey, the Tyrells and the Tarleys get on well. Highgarden and Horn Hill. Have you found fan expectations to be a little odd? Because we kind of expected it to be great. Was there a little wait-and-see attitude with other people, that you saw, or did you not really hear a lot of the noise on the internet…?

While we were shooting, I tried to stay away from it, I think. I mean, when I first got the part, I thought it would be silly not to do some research, of course, regarding how big it is. But… when you’re shooting it’s a bad idea. Because [expectations] can distract you. Speculation like, “I hope it’s not like this,” or “I hope it’s like that,” that really doesn’t mean much, because the guys in charge [Dave and D.B.] have already written it. They’re not going to change it. And it can really ruin the pace you have in your mind. And it’s only now that people are seeing it that any kind of opinion really counts. Now that they’ve seen it, it’s out there, that’s when fans’ opinions really matters. And they do really matter. And I got these really lovely Tweets, thanking me for taking this part. And I always think, “Thank you so much, for liking this booking. I’m thankful that I’m in this.”

But the process of making it, you couldn’t know at the time…

There were certain days on set, when it felt like a huge team effort. Especially someone at my level. I get to think, I, in a roundabout way, am working with Sean Bean, and Mark Addy, and Lena, and all these great people… and we’re all a team, pulling together to make this show good. Even if you never have a scene with any of these people. It feels like we’re a unit going forward, all with a common goal, and it really feels like an incredibly tight family.

I hope that a lot of the younger actors affiliated with this show… I hope that there’s an appreciation for what they’re being given. Because the writing and the production is so good, someone who is new to television or film might just assume this is how it always is! And in truth you’re really on uncommon ground, being surrounded with so much talent. And even from an acting standpoint, being able to work with who you’re working with. There are so many bad roles out there, so much bad acting.

The worst thing you can see is an actor “being something” onscreen when they know it’s not very good. You see that a lot.

I’ve seen that a lot.

Yeah, you see the actor delivering his lines in a kind of half-apologetic way, and that stops them from immersing themselves in the world, because it’s the actor being somewhere they don’t want to be. And that comes across every single time. And there’s nothing you can do. It’s a completely involuntary thing. You can pretend to smile. But the effect that a smile has on your eyes is completely involuntary. If you’re not happy with the scene, not happy with material, that will come across whether you want it to or not. Luckily we all knew how brilliant it was.

How difficult is the process of finding, of picking good scripts?

It’s tough. A lot of the best film scripts don’t read very well. And some do. The King’s Speech, which is packed with dialogue, has all these great little scenes and situations. I bet that was amazing to read. And the same with Game of Thrones, where sure, you’re getting guys with their heads being hacked off, but there’s also so many lovely little scenes.

Bryan Cogman mentioned in a recent interview with us that the scene he wrote for Jaime and Jory, standing outside the king’s chambers, was actually kind of bland if you just read it straight. But when Nikolaj and Jamie Sives got a hold of it, through their acting skills, through the nuance they have and what they’re able to portray, it’s just so very good.

Lena’s scene with Michelle [Fairley], confessing about the dead child, that’s such a wonderful bit of writing too. And that could be a theatrical monologue. A lot of the scenes could be very theatrical.

I agree, I could see them onstage. Easily. Lena’s scene is great. Cersei… on top of the emotion she’s showing, on top of what she’s saying, you as a viewer know in the back of your mind that only moments before she was clearly worried that Bran would not die. And she still gets you to feel a sort of sympathy, even while in the back of your mind you know it’s mostly an act.

Exactly that, yeah. Fantastic. And Lena didn’t have to play that with any sort of wink to the audience, because you feel like the emotions are genuine and real. She almost fools the audience! Incredible piece of acting.

She did fool the audience! I read multiple message boards that accused her of being out-of-character. Or of the writers “softening” Cersei. Where I don’t think they’re softening at all. I think they’re showing depth.

There are so many wonderful actors. Having Harry [Lloyd] is incredible. Having him do what he does. When Harry and Emilia [Clarke] are together… there’s just something incredibly unsettling. Especially in that first episode, where they first appear. The whole atmosphere… A good actor, when he or she appears onscreen, can completely change the atmosphere.

[Speaking of "unsettling," FaB mentions the nipple twist they did not include in that opening Viserys / Daenerys scene...]

It’s not as sinister, though, really, I don’t think. Because when somebody actively does something like that, a physical action, it’s not as scary as potential ever is. When somebody has the potential to do something horrific, everybody’s more on-edge if they never… quite… show that.

Just the way he removed her clothes was sinister.

It was. The potential for violence is so much stronger if it’s amorphous. It’s like what Sean Bean said, or Ned’s line rather, the classic line of Ned’s, “I don’t fight in tournaments, because I don’t want a man to know what I can do for real,” there’s much more strength in that than somebody who just loses [his temper].

I am in favor of them giving more dimensions to people like Ned [with his expanded fighting skills], and Cersei, so we can see these different sides. With the show, it’s not just about the book fans, it also about attracting a new audience. Making characters more believable, giving them more depth, that helps our cause. Some people worried there were too many characters to attract a new audience, but according to the new people who love it, they had no problem at all following along. I also think it’s because of the iconic settings. You know where you are when you’re at Castle Black, et cetera.

Of course. There are really strong design elements on the show. That bit between Dany and Viserys, where she strikes back at him and says, “The next time you lay a hand on me is the last time you’ll have hands,” that’s incredible. That’s done in yellows and in browns, heated colours… that’s fire, and the fire in her, and the passion of that moment, on top of the colours we normally see with the Dothraki. And then it cuts to Castle Black in a second and we’re scrubbing tables. Everything’s blue. The colours of those two images, set side by side, you can’t confuse [the areas]. And there’s nothing wrong with having a few different stories. It’s easy to follow different stories if you have a cracking visual motif that gets you right into the setting.

It makes me feel sorry for people who only want to follow one character, or one storyline. I feel like they’re missing out, and partly because they’re so passionate.

But the passion that people have for these stories, these details… it’s incredibly flattering to us. We love it, and we appreciate the fact that most of the people are happy with it. Because the worst thing you can have, with regard to people perceiving your art, is indifference. You’d rather people hate it than just not care. Because quite often the reasons that people hate something, hate it for the same reasons that people love it. It’s all about strength of emotion, strength of opinion. A weak opinion is the worst opinion. Better to have someone say, “I hate it, and I’ll tell you why I hate it.”

It’s true. At Winter-Is-Coming, we get all kinds of mail. And usually around the time that there’s a controversial discussion happening, we get requests to ban this poster, or ban that one, block this, block that. And our view is: If they’re not being criminal about something, or just spamming nonsense, let them have their say.

[The topic switches to preparations for this upcoming season...] You can’t go on diets, right? You’re not allowed to do various things to adjust your body weight. You sort of have to maintain a shape. Casting directors would say don’t fix your teeth, all that.

Yeah, exactly. But… well, realistically, Samwell would be losing weight.

What with all the stuff he does.

Of course he would. I think he would.

If he loses weight before going on his great trek… then you know, that’s not realistic. You can’t just show up to set having lost fifty pounds.

Yeah. Probably not.

[It's hard to describe his look other than to say it looks as though he's considering pulling a weight-loss prank on the producers. There's a gleam in his eye...]

[FaB asks about hobbies, and John talks about the love of his life... which apparently is not the Manchester City football team, as FaB initially reported. Oh, the infamy. How can I even claim to pull for Arsenal now? It's like I know nothing!]

[Though that's a pretty cool name, "Arsenal." Like, "Who are you?" "I'm Bob. And you?" "Arsenal." It's badass. Tragically we never discussed Arsenal football. Or luckily, else I would have flubbed that too...]

My tutor, when I left drama school, said it was very important to maintain friendships outside of drama. When you’ve had a bad audition, you don’t really want to swap stories with another actor who’s just had a bad audition. So where I come from, football is very important.

From where you come from especially. The whole city [Manchester] has great teams. And it’s not that big of a city!

No, it’s not. Yeah, the two football teams we have [Manchester United and Manchester City] are doing very well. And maintaining that [hobby] is important if that was important to you before you’ve enjoyed any kind of success. Me, I’m still living in the same house that I lived in for seventeen years. If that doesn’t remind me who I am, when I go there…

Yeah, nothing will. Your family is certainly not going to treat you like King Actor.

[A sudden faux bitterness...] No, they’re not! They should!

You can come to Winter-Is-Coming for the special treatment.

Well thank you very much.

Sean Bean’s football team…

Sheffield United.

Sheffield United, yeah. Didn’t he, for a time, own part of the team?

He was on the board. He had a very, very active role. He’s incredibly passionate about football. When they got relegated, moved down to the lower league, he wasn’t very happy. He spoke his mind, and told the manager under no uncertain terms how unhappy he was with that [situation]. And that’s great! It’s great someone can be so passionate about it. Actors, a lot of the time, and public figures like Sean, who is an incredibly famous man… people in his position don’t often feel comfortable pledging their allegiance. And I think it’s great that he manages to keep that passion and normality in his life. His team—and I hope he will forgive me for saying this—is not an incredibly glamorous team. [FaB note: it's true, Sheffield United are not a very good team of late.] And it’s amazing that he can remain as loyal to them through all the bad. I admire it.

Sometimes a team just gets in your blood.

It’s true.

With American football… which really has less of a case to be called “football” than soccer does, but I haven’t thought up a better name for it yet… I follow one team, the Rams, who I picked up as a 4th grade child mainly because of their cool horn-design helmets. And I just followed them along throughout my life, through highs and lows, and… more lows. Luckily we can’t get “relegated.” Or we would have. Many times.

Ah. [At this point I think John has a pitying look for the FaBster. Or I'm just imagining it.]

European football is a little like American baseball, in which the rich get richer. It’s a league of haves and the have-nots. Probably the closest comparison to Manchester United is the New York Yankees, who just spend crazy money, year after year. And Manchester United… they’re the haves. They have the money, and they have many, many fans outside of the Manchester area. And the New York Yankees, also able to buy the near-guarantee of a playoff appearance every year. But you probably don’t get a lot of people outside the city of Manchester rooting for Manchester City.

I think the estimate is 330 million fans worldwide for Manchester United. Which is incredible. But City is now the richest football club in the world.

Really! I did not know that.

They’ve been taken over by an Arab partnership from Dubai. So quite possibly in the next few years we could get what we call “glory hunting” fans…

Bandwagoners.

Bandwagoners. And that will be a very sad day.

Well then it’s a bragging right to say, “I was there from the start, back when they weren’t so good.”

Right.

What is the one skill you have that no one else knows about?

Well. I’m not one to keep quiet about what I can do. Because there’s such a limited amount. I’ve not got any hidden talents. I can can drum.

A drummer!

Oh yeah.

Nice. So you’re into music.

I love music.

What are you into right now? What songs are you listening to with frequency?

I actually love buying an album. There’s nothing more exciting than buying a new album. And just listening to it in its entirety. I think that’s disappearing a little bit these days, with MP3 downloads where you can pick different songs and disregard the rest. When often you’re not getting the entire story [doing that]. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the band Fleet Foxes?

No!

[FaB of course checked 'em out when he got back; Fleet Foxes is sort of a Blind Mellon-meets-Simon and Garfunkle vibe; very mellow, but quite catchy.]

They’re an American band, they’re kind of folky. Great harmonies. They’re really, really cool. I just bought their new album [Helplessness Blues, May 2011] without having heard any of the songs. Listened to it on the train on the way up. And it’s just magnificent. I love it. An album is art in and of itself, in terms of the pace of it. The order of the songs is vital. Listening to an album from start to finish is one of my little pleasures. Nothing creates an emotional response in me like music.

That’s interesting. Because you rarely talk about music on Twitter; people sort of think they know you from your Twitter account.

[He seems to consider that...] I do rarely talk about it. True, yeah. Which is strange, because I love it. But if I hear a bit of music, I suppose I don’t want to tell people about it [that way] because that’s not how I found out about it. Finding a piece of music you love is an incredible experience. For me it’s personal.

So you if you weren’t an actor, you might be a musician. A drummer.

Oh, no. I don’t think I’ve the stamina to pull that off full time. It’s good to have some skill. Thankfully, acting seems to be working for me. Some actors, friends of mine from school, they get a bit down if they don’t land something right off. But from my view, there are more characters out there to play than actors to play them. I say, “If nothing comes along for a while, don’t worry. Because out there, there’s a character that only you can play. You can play it better than anybody else. You’ll get it if you persevere.” I was lucky. I came out, and two characters that were ready for me to play were there for me to play.”

I really want to see this Giovanni now, dammit.

I’m sure you will. Tom Fontana will make sure this is seen. He knows what he’s doing. And we only wrapped two weeks ago. So it’s likely not going to be out until autumn.

We get a lot of stuff [in the U.S.] so I can’t see how it won’t somehow find its way.

Yeah. Game of Thrones though, that’s like… a huge slice of Americana now, isn’t it.

[That thought is funny to FaBihoff, especially since it seems so British.] I guess it is? They call Martin the “American Tolkien.” But really, they’re nothing alike.

Well that’s just a very broad generalization to make about fantasy. Americans have a reputation for doing things just a little bolder than anyone else. And that’s George’s writing style. It’s why he’s incredible. He doesn’t mind breaking all the [genre] rules. He just breaks away and does what he wants.

Yes, he went and wrote something unfilmable.

And look how that went!

It’s a good thing. But as far as it being an “American” story, well… that’s funny being that the cast is so very British.

[Having a bit of fun...] We’re very British, aren’t we!

But these days… aren’t the British sort of the go-to people—or at least the go-to accent—where “fantasy” is concerned? Whereas in the 80?s and 90?s they were the go-to villain.

I think we’re just associated with unpleasantness. Generally. Yeah.

[Insert FaB's dorkesque laughter.]

Some aspects of unpleasantness are very appealing! But yeah, we do get put into certain types of “categories.” English actors. But it’s kind of changing now. There are a lot of British comedians getting on well in America. Ricky Gervais, Russell Brand…

Oh yeah. I love Gervais. Some people find him too… much? Too biting. Insulting. But I think he’s brilliant. Comedic timing.

Some people had a problem with his act at the Globes. But really they shouldn’t.

I agree!

Public figures should accept the fact that they’re public figures. And if you’re a public figure, and you transgress, somebody’s going to flag you for it. Just because that person is in the room with you… that doesn’t make it any worse at all. At least you can hear what people are saying.

Right! It’s not behind your back!

Exactly that!

We at Winter-is-Coming.net will be sure to insult you to your face if it comes to it.

Well, thank you for that.

Okay. My final question, and this is kind of a personal crusade for me.

Yeah? [One eyebrow WAY up. Like he's half-expecting FaB to ask him to sign up for a Peace Corps tour in Afghanistan. I think he's just feigning nervousness though.]

It’s something I ask of everyone.

Ah, now wait a minute. [He looks at the door and makes like he's about to leave. But he doesn't. But he looks ready to bolt!]

I am attempting to ban the color indigo from the seven-color spectrum.

[Silence.]

Hear me out… [And FaB goes into his requisite little crusade speech. Primary colors, secondary colors, etc. Sophie Turner and Lena Headey are both mentioned in their utter refusal to ban indigo.]

[John listens intently. Until finally...]

Ban it!

[FaB is overjoyed...!] YES!

Ban it! I’ll never wear it. What harm could banning it do me? Ban it. And… well, wait, is it just the word? What if you renamed it?

I’m banning it from the seven-color spectrum. It can appear anywhere else.

… Yeah. Alright, yeah. I think we can do without that.

Well, now… see, that was more of a tepid ‘yeah.’

I’m trying to get passionate about this. It’s quite difficult to really get behind this argument. But right now I can’t say there any any more pressing matters on my mind. But then… [thoughtful]… there’s a saying associated with it, right? “Richard Of York…”

[FaB has never heard this, and had to go look it up!] Uh…

["Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain." Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.]

We either have to put a different color in beginning with “i” … or change the rhyme itself. [Pause...] I think this is only going to cause more problems than it’s worth.

[FaB's exasperated sigh sounds like air escaping a leaky tire...] I believe in this crusade, John.

Okay. Who do we speak to about this? Let’s say for now I’m on board. Who are we going to put this to? Who can help us with it?

[Mopey silence from FaB. Who indeed? Liberace is dead...] Not Jack Nicholson. He likes indigo.

Jack Nicholson, I doubt he’s too bothered either way. He seems far too cool. I’m just the least cool man you’ve ever interviewed. That’s why I’m getting seriously behind this.

You’re technically the only man I’ve ever interviewed, [one on one], so you’re also the coolest. And best looking. Most charming…

And the other way around, but thanks for not mentioning.

Yes, you are the most hideous man I’ve ever interviewed.

I just thanked you for not mentioning. And that’s going to stand awhile, that record. Most hideous…

[FaB has a rather forced apologetic look...]

[Without being prompted, John gets right back to the indigo quandary...] The last color could be white. Or black. But those aren’t so much colors as tones, aren’t they? A problem you’re causing, probably without thinking about it, is that by removing something you’re limiting the number of other color combinations. If you just had indigo as a background color, and not in the actual spectrum, if you couldn’t actually see indigo, would you be happy then? [Pause.] I can’t believe we’re talking about this. People are going to unearth this [interview] in a few thousand years and go, “This gives us incredible insight as to the plight of the people of that era.” And as a result, they’re going to stop studying us altogether.

If we put it in a time capsule. Yeah!

Yeah. “Listen to this…”

This and Gervais. Well, alright. I’ll stay in touch regarding who we’ll have to contact. To get it banned. Someone in the fashion industry, no doubt. Tim Gunn.

Obama.

Obama!

Get it straight to the White House. You won’t have much argument from there on out.

No, but then FOX News would then actively promote it. Maybe approach Michelle Obama first.

What if you anger her? She could paint the White House indigo.

[Horrified!] The Indigo House! No!

Look what you’ve done.

[FaB ADDENDUM! Because we wanted to wait to post this interview until after HBO aired an episode that actually had Samwell in it again, more than two weeks have passed. FaB sent four extra questions to keep the conversation timely. And you lucky members of House Gatewatch get these four extra questions completely free of charge! See how cool we are? It's free!]

Your line in “You Win Or You Die,” the one where you ask, “Can you sing a song for me, Pyp?” Do you know if that was a sly wink from the writers, tipping their hats to The Lord of the Rings?

I didn’t know that when we were shooting it, because I had never seen or read The Lord of the Rings. Fantasy was never something that really caught my interest until GoT came my way. A lot of people have been commenting that the Jon/Sam relationship is a little like the Frodo/Samwise dynamic in LOTR, but I’m not familiar with it enough to really be able to understand the reference. And I think that shows how well the reference about the song was planted into the show. People who will understand it get it immediately, but people who don’t don’t feel excluded because it is done so subtly they aren’t even aware that a reference has passed them by. So, no to be honest I didn’t know that. I think if I did know I might have played it too much. Its best that its a writers reference and not an actors reference.

Pyp gets annoyed when Sam asks him to sing, and he immediately leaves. And there’s a certain way Sam asks the question, sort of innocently, and also a look he gets right after Pyp leaves that makes the viewer think, “Perhaps he did that on purpose in order to speak to Jon alone.” In your mind was that the case?

I think there was a little bit of that, yeah. In episode 7 I wanted to try and get Samwell’s intellegence over a bit more. Now that he is finding his place in the Night’s Watch, I wanted to start portraying the more positive aspects of his character. He knows what to say to have the right effect, and I think he’s quite clever with his language and the way he uses it to influence people. That scene has lots of examples of that. There’s a bit where he’s talking to Jon whilst Mormont is giving his speech. The bit about “There’s honour being a steward,” and “Not much really, but there’s food.” After that line when Jon starts to laugh, there is a little second glance I give before I go back to listening, which is essentially, ‘Right, he’s cheered up a bit. That’s my job done. And if he’s happy, I’m happy’. And, yeah in the little exchange with Pyp, Sam wants him out so that he can have this moment. He knows what to say to bring the best and worst out of people. Pyp storms off, and there is a look Sam gives after him, as if to say, ‘He’s sulking, I can deal with him later, but now I’m going to concentrate on this.’

Your line, “I always wanted to be a wizard,” got a HUGE response. It’s being quoted all over the place. I found it very humorous, and I like that they’re sort of using your own natural delivery (it’s like “apologetic comedy” if I have to try and pin it down with a descriptive) to give Sam an added dimension. Would that qualify as your favourite line thus far, or do you have another?

That was a nice line. I loved it and thought about how I was going to do it for a long time. It shows the difference between these two characters. It shows Jon’s ambition, a real ambition, to be a man. He’s been in a masculine atmosphere all his life, learning to fire arrows and sword fight and is desperate to be a fighter, and strapping, and dashing, and manly. To prove himself as a worthwhile person to shed the stigma of being a bastard. Sam, on the other hand, has been left alone to fantasize and wrap himself up in escapism and his own world. I think he says that to Jon as a genuine trading of information. You wanted to be that, I wanted to be this. But it’s also a line about: you can’t always get what you want. Just because you always wanted to be it doesn’t mean it’s your right. I love that line. There’s some others I like too. “Didn’t know where to put it,” being the main other one. But, as an actor, you can do so much with all the lines if you choose to. Its a treat.

We’ve just begun to discover there are Sam/Jon ‘shippers (relationship wishers) out there, and it may not be long before someone comes out with some full-on Kirk/Spock slashfic fantasy stories (which may horrify George R.R. Martin even more since he hates fanfiction). Where do you come out on this? Is it flattering or freaky?

I think that any indication that there are people out there who have connected with something that you’re doing is always very, very welcome. Once we’ve shot the scene and put it out there, it’s totally out of our hands, and if people want to take it further and think about it enough that they put extra work into their liking of it, then that’s great. I’m so glad that people like that relationship. It is essential that it comes across how important their friendship is to both of them. I wanted it to feel warm when they’re together. Comfortable to watch and settle into. And the thought (as is proved in the scene we’ve discussed) if they have each other, then chances are they’re going to be alright. George has a right to dislike fan fiction, I suppose, because he works so hard to create his work and people take what he’s created and take it upon themselves to predict the motivations and actions of his characters. If something is not quite right, then it must irk him because he knows the characters so well. I won’t get involved with any fan fiction or anything, but while it’s going on I’m just pleased that we made an impression with people.

Glad you feel that way! Thanks for the interview, John!

Fire And Blood!

[ADDENDUM: John's team is indeed Manchester United, not Manchester City. Good catch, Steve The Pirate! Figures FaB would muff that part. Though listening back to the replay, he never actually says it! D'oh!]

One of the most interesting announcements to warm geek hearts in connection to HBO’s Game of Thrones was the decision by the executive producers to hire someone to create the Dothraki language for the show. They turned to the Language Creation Society, and with their help selected David J. Peterson to create the language. Below, he answers a few of our questions about the creation process.

How long did the research process take before you really started? What sort of things did you pull from the books that were important to shaping your approach?

Research was ongoing throughout the entire process. In addition to bringing my own background in linguistics to bear on the project, I’d also hunt through my own store of language dictionaries to learn how words from various languages came to exist. I found myself constantly pondering one of two questions regarding new lexemes: (1) What’s likely? and (2) What’s not implausible? A good naturalistic conlang will strike a balance between the two (i.e. the choices made will be plausible, but they won’t simply be copies of vocabulary and structures in existing natural languages).

In addition to that, though, reading the books was invaluable, because it helped to flesh out the world through the eyes of the Dothraki. Though there’s little vocabulary in book three, for example, we see Dany visiting places on the outskirts of the Dothraki Sea that the Dothraki themselves would visit. The peoples and customs of those areas would be known to the Dothraki, and they’d be able to speak about them in their language. Little by little, then, the world that can be described by the Dothraki language expanded.

As for conlanging itself, the online language creation community itself was my teacher. I’ve spent the past decade of my life learning from everyone. There is no more invaluable resource than experience, and I’ve learned from my own and that of many, many other fantastic conlangers.

What kind of freedom did you have in coming up with Dothraki idiom?

Pretty much complete freedom. Of course, I had to include all the extant vocabulary (and accommodate the names), but other than that, I could do what I wanted with the language, within reason (i.e. within the dictates of what I felt to be appropriate for a naturalistic language grounded in the universe that George R. R. Martin had created). With that freedom, I’ve tried my best to create the most authentic language I could manage. The work itself (A Song of Ice and Fire) demands nothing less.

In this second episode, we start to get some sense of Dothraki religion — the sun is a god, the moon is a wife, the Great Stallion; later on, we learn the Dothraki believe the stars are fallen warriors. Has the Dothraki belief system influenced any particular phrases, whether it’s the cultural attitude towards love, or perhaps associations between warriors and the stars?

I’ve had a lot of fun with that. For example, there’s an expression “shieraki gori”, which means “the stars are charging”. It’s used as a way of wishing someone good luck, or to let them know that things will go well, e.g. “Shieraki gori ha kishaan: Kisha vogaki haesh rakhi ajjalan!” which is, “The stars are charging for us: We shall slaughter the Lamb Men today!” The idea is that if the stars are fallen warriors, then when they’re in attack mode, things are going well for you (unless you happen to be on the other side of the arakh, of course).

Do you still actively add on to the lexicon, or is that on hold until the production asks for something new, now that there’s a second season?

From the beginning, I started building in vocabulary that I thought would appear not just in the first season, but in seasons to come (based on the various chapters set in Essos in the first four books). Generating vocabulary takes a good deal of time and energy, so it never hurts to be prepared—indeed, it makes translation go a lot faster. Plus, working on vocab helps me to keep my general fluency level up (which also aids translation).

There’s a lengthy speech coming from Drogo in this latest episode. How long does it normally take to translate from the script to Dothraki, and then to provide the ancillary material for the actors, such as the MP3s that you’ve mentioned in other interviews?

I remember that recording. Apart from everything else, it took me about forty minutes (and dozens of attempts) to get that recorded in a way that I was happy with. I feel for Jason! Probably a lot more work for him than that last scene of his in episode 3, for example.

For the scripts, translating was only part of it. As this is a created language, if I didn’t happen to have the vocabulary I needed, I’d have to create it, which is an involved process. Once I had the vocabulary, translating a line doesn’t take much time. I usually give a line a first pass, and then double check to make sure everything is conjugated and declined appropriately. The phonetic transcription would come next, and then the interlinears (not an English translation, but a gloss of each word and affix). The interlinear would serve as my third pass. I’d go through each line this way for a given script, and when I was done, I’d record them all at once, which actually served as a fourth pass (every so often I’d catch a little error here and there when recording). A full script would take about a week.

Speaking of a second season, have there been any discussions about what role you or other members of the LCS might play? We’re all hopeful Valyrian enters the mix at some point!

I can’t comment on any potential future work yet, but we’d be happy to tackle whatever language creation needs may arise. I know the one language ASoIaF fans are most interested in seeing is High Valyrian. GRRM has described High Valyrian as the Latin of Essos (with languages like Braavosi and Pentoshi being like the Romance languages). For awhile, I didn’t know what I would do with High Valyrian if given the opportunity. We have a lot of names, a couple words, and then the phrases Valar Morghulis and Valar Dohaeris (”All men must die” and “All men must serve”, respectively). Then, a couple of months ago, I kind of had an epiphany and knew *exactly* what I’d do with the nominal and verbal systems, and how those phrases specifically would work. I’d relish the opportunity to bring it to life (in a manner of speaking, since, at the time of the series, High Valyrian is mostly a dead language).

You didn’t just create the Dothraki language for the show. You’re also credited as helping develop Ashai’i and a language called Skroth. Now, Ashai’i is obvious enough, since Ashai is a locale often mentioned in the books. But Skroth is not something directly named in the text. Our understanding is that it’s a kind of language created for the white walkers. Could you explain just how that developed?

Back in February, Greg Spence approached me about creating some language-like elements for the Others for the opening scene of Episode 1—something that sounded appropriate, or that could be manipulated to sound appropriate. All of us had the same description to go off of: “his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake” (from the prologue). Greg and his team had some ideas, and I had some ideas as well, so I put together a phonological sketch for them, and some language-like dialogue. They then manipulated it, and I think the result is rather like the sound of the cracking of ice on a winter lake.

Regarding the name, I needed to come up with some sort of name, so that was it. It suits the sounds system.

The fact that the “language” for the white walkers basically seems to be various sounds like sharp cracks and creaks, how in the world did you actually develop that? The phonology must have been very strange!

Not so strange, actually. My idea was that cracking ice (imagine crunching an icecube in your mouth) sounds like semi-quiet periods of compression interspersed by short periods of noisy cracking/crashing—and, as ice has no vocal cords, the noise is voiceless. So I figured the entire sound system would be voiceless (only voiceless consonants, and vowels, likewise, aren’t voiced, but are whispered), and words should be built in such a way that there are noisy consonant clusters or fricatives at the beginning and end of a syllable, with a whispered vowel in between (the word “Skroth” is a nice example). On my end, I recorded the “dialogue” as faithfully as I could, and then added some effects to it to give them an idea what I was thinking, and they worked their magic. I think the end result is great.

At present, this is just a phonological sketch. If there were enough interest in it, it has the ability to be expanded into a full language. (The same is true of Ashai’i, incidentally.)

To go a bit further afield, I know some other created languages were developed with a belief — or at least a conceit — that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true in its “strong” form: language directly determines thought. I believe Klingon, for example, was created with this idea, that the Klingon language directly shaped the aggressive, warrior culture. Where do you stand on the theory, both in real world terms, and in terms of whether it’s a useful or meaningful conceit to have when creating a language?

I’m not sure how many linguists take the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seriously, but I put no store in it (I’m also not completely sold on the weak version). In fact, I decided to have a little fun with the idea, by making no gender distinctions in the grammar of the language (the pronoun /me/ means “she”, “he” or “it”, depending on context). As in real life, though, gender-neutral pronouns don’t guarantee gender-equality amongst the Dothraki. I think if one is creating a naturalistic language, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would be something to avoid—that, however, is because *I* don’t really put credence in it. Another naturalistic conlanger might, and therefore might very well make use of it, which is cool. I’m always interested to see what someone will do with any linguistic theory in a conlang.

Have you taken influence from other languages/cultures which share traits with the Dothraki?

Elsewhere I’ve mentioned natural languages that have influenced Dothraki (at various places and to varying degrees, Arabic, Spanish and Russian come to mind), but the largest influences were probably a few of my own languages—Zhyler and Kamakawi, in particular—and even then, not the grammar, so much as the way the lexicon is built and fleshed out. Culturewise, I tried to find etymologies that date back to the Iron Age (which is about where the Dothraki are, it seems). Digging back through languages I know well (Romance languages, English, Hawaiian) proved useful just to see how it is that various peoples conceived of and characterized various phenomena that we now take for granted—or have lost touch with (e.g. I don’t do a lot of smithing or weaving [though, of course, there are people who do, and they rock!]).

Is there something you wanted to include in Dothraki, but weren’t able to for various reasons – whether a complicated morphology that looked like fun, phonemes, or something else along those lines?

Vowel harmony is my favorite phonological system to play with, but if multiple people are going to be working with a language, such a system requires coordination—the same goes for any kind of stem-internal phonological or morphological change (even something common like intervocalic voicing). To be safe, I figured I’d better leave stems alone, for the most part (or at least forms that might be used as citation forms, like the nominative form of nouns). Otherwise I might have tried to implement a triconsonantal root system (à la Arabic) again. I did that with my very first language, and have always wanted to take another crack at it, since it wasn’t done naturally the first time around.

You’ve looked a lot at etymology and word construction, from the bits given in the books. What’s been one of your favourite new words or sentences you’ve constructed?

I’ve had fun with the various rotating words for “girl” and “woman”. I get the sense that the Dothraki are kind of youth-centric, in the sense that able bodied men and women are revered above the lame, the infirm and the elderly (cf. Daenerys V in GoT; it seems the only elderly that are respected are the dosh khaleen, who, of course, are former khaleesis [and may have been respected or at least revered already], and over whom an aura of mystery hangs). Given the general power structure in a khalasar, I figured this might lead to a kind of push chain in the vocabulary for women.

The original word for “woman” was *?esi (and you can see a reflex of it in a word like “khaleesi”, which was originally khal + *?esi [with an epenthetic vowel inserted for euphony]). The word for “girl”, though, was used with increasing frequency over time, and is now the word for “woman”: “chiori”. The older form *?esi exists still in the /-eesi/ suffix (not really productive, but occurs in a few lexemes), and also in the modern word “yesi”, which means something like “crone”.

To replace the old word for “girl”, a pet name parents used with their daughters was promoted to full word status: “nayat”, which was a word for a particular type of mushroom. That particular word was used as a pet name because in Dothraki, trees (and other plants that stand up from the ground) are characterized as busts (i.e. the leafy part of the tree is called “nhare”, which is the word for a human’s head; the trunk is called “lenta”, which is the word for “neck”; and the interior of a trunk is referred to by “fotha”, which is “throat”). Anyway, the particular mushroom I’m thinking of has an ovate cap, and resembles a child’s head with long hair falling at the sides (unbraided). That was how the initial association with young girls arose. In modern Dothraki, the word no longer has any connection to mushrooms.

SOURCE: Suvudu

GameOfThrones.hu interviewed Emilia Clarke:

The second “victim” of our e-mail based interviews is none else than the talented Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Emilia is a young actress, who recently graduated from the famous London Drama Centre. Her first wide-screen appearance was in the TV-movie Triassic Attack (2010), and she also debuted in TV in one episode of the Doctors.

Her greatest opportunity came when she was cast in Game of Thrones as the youngest living Targaryen, right after Tamzin Merchant left the same role. I believe we can say that she does her job really well.

Emilia kindly and enthusiastically answered our questions.

GameofThrones.hu: When and how did you get the role? Have you attended the first round of castings or did you only enter after Tamzin Merchant was out of the show?

Emilia Clarke: I did not attend first round of castings, no and I also didn’t thought that I could actually get the role, it was a tough competition indeed. But the whole story how and when I got that thought about even trying goes back to that time when I played in theatre here and there and in Drama Centre London, I had this really great Russian teacher, Vladimir Mirodan, and we, in our class, spoke a lot about our future opportunities…yeah I guess he was the one who inspired me for going after my dreams and hopes. I’m still keeping a journal with his quotes . Me and Harry (Harry Lloyd – Viserys), we are a childhood friends, so we decided to just go for it. See what happens. And look where we are now!

GoT.hu: You mentioned in a previous interview that you started reading A Clash of Kings after the shooting of Season 1 was finished. Where are you now in the book?

EC: Yes, we were shooting from July to December, quite long, as I’m not used to it but now I’m in the middle of A Storm of Swords. And I’m hoping to finish all books by July.

GoT.hu: Who is your favourite character from the books (aside from Daenerys, of course) and why (you may also mention A Clash of Kings character )?

EC: Hm. That’s a tough one. One of my favourite characters are definitely King Robert Baratheon. I think Mark Addy is a legend. He is brilliant.

GoT.hu: What do you think the greatest difference is between the Daenerys of the show and the one of the books?

EC: I love how they started to make Daenerys more confident and dominant, that’s the greatest difference I like.

GoT.hu: Is there anything in common between you and Daenerys?

EC: At first Dany seemed to me very fragile, that was until she met Drogo and became his princess. I think the same has happened to me also. Life is tough sometimes and with time you just get more and more inure. I would say we have the same strength and inner beauty.

GoT.hu: If you would have to choose between the westerosi and the dothraki way of life, which one would you pick?

EC: I think I would choose to live like westerosi. Probably that’s because I know how?s the way of life of dothraki.

GoT.hu: King Jaehaerys once said: “Whenever a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin to see if the child will achieve greatness or madness”. However, sometimes both are apparent. What do you think about the Targaryen greatness and/or madness? Do you think Daenerys also has some “insane” parts inside her that are just waiting to break loose?

EC: I think so, yeah. I also think she’s acting depending on situation. If something comes to that, she might also do something very mad.

GoT.hu: How do you imagine the future fate of Dany (regarding where you are in the books now)? Do you think she will ever get back to Westeros to rule as queen? Did Mr. Martin give you any hints?

EC: No, actually he didn’t. He has been very stingy when it comes to information haha. Can’t say anything about Dany from the books, because there might be a lot of differences, I’ll know more when I’ll get my script in the early July.

GoT.hu: What was the hardest scene to shoot for you, and why? What about funny scenes, memories from the first season?

EC: The hardest part was putting that blonde wig on every morning. And of course naked scenes felt awkward at first, now I’m trying to get used to it. But we all had a great time together, I’ve learn a lot and I’ve grown a lot. It’s been a pleasure working with such an amazing cast and crew, they were indeed much more experienced than I was.

GoT.hu: As you know, we are Hungarians and we were proud to learn that there were quite a lot of Hungarian stuntmen in the show, working on the Malta location, moreover, you even had a Hungarian stunt double. How was it to work with them?

EC: Wow. That was great. And I mean really-really great. I’ve never been to Malta before, until I had to for the show… I’ve made a lot of friends and I found out a lot about the culture, as I’m a travelling geek, I love to travel, I love to discover new things and new places, meet new and exciting people… That all was there and memories from Malta are still kept in my heart and mind.

GoT.hu: Jason Momoa mentioned in some interviews that he was feeling really bad while shooting the initial rape-like sex scenes with you. How do you remember shooting these scenes?

EC: Yeah I guess we were both feeling bad… That was more awkward to me though, Jason would agree. But since we tried to just do it like two professionals, I think it went well enough.

GoT.hu: Which filming location did you like more, Malta or Ireland?

EC: Can I say both? There were a lot of magical things.

GoT.hu: How many episodes have you seen from Game of Thrones? What is your opinion on the show as a whole?

EC: I’ve seen six and I personally love the show.

The set design, costume design, writing and acting are all outstanding. It’s like watching a mini-movie each week.

GoT.hu: The character of Daenerys made you internationally famous pretty much overnight. How do you deal with the side-effects of being a celebrity? On the other hand, did it give a boost to your career as an actress?

EC: I don’t think I’m very famous yet… though this experience gives me a lot more than I expected after graduating drama centre, indeed.

GoT.hu: Is there something you would like to ask from one of the other actors? And who would (s)he be? (We’ll add it to the list of questions when we are making an interview with that particular person.)

EC: I would ask Mark Addy if he would like to sing a duet with me. Definitely.

Thank you and best wishes to Hungary.

GoT.hu: The pleasure is ours, we wish you good luck and success for your future career.

You can see IGN interviews with Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) about Game Of Thrones, here and here. In the first one, Gillen talks about nudity in Game Of Thrones, and in the second about what to except from his character in season two.

Game of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams: I Did Try to Make Arya Left-Handed!

by Hanh Nguyen
SOURCE: TVGuide

Living in the fantasy world of HBO’s Game of Thrones can be brutal, especially on the children.

Just ask newcomer Maisie Williams who plays 11-year-old Arya Stark. It’s not easy being a Stark family member these days. In the season premiere, Arya’s younger brother Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) witnessed his first beheading and later took a crippling tumble out of a tower window.

In Sunday’s episode (airing 9/8c), Arya must run for her life after her father Ned Stark (Sean Bean) has been betrayed and captured in a bloody coup at King’s Landing. Add graphic nudity and sex scenes to the mix, and it’s clear that Game of Thrones is not meant to be kid-friendly viewing.

“Mom lets me watch all of it,” Williams, 13, admits to TVGuide.com.  “I usually cover my eyes for some parts because it’s a bit embarrassing, but it’s just acting at the end of the day. And I’ve seen how the beheading was done and things like that. It looks scary, but I know in real life it was not bad.”

Despite being exposed to the rather adult situations, Williams remains refreshingly unjaded and identifies with her spirited character.

“I describe Arya as quite feisty, a tomboy,” she says. “She likes to break the rules and doesn’t really like being how everyone thinks she should be. I like playing outside and messing around. When I was in primary school my best friend was a boy and we always goofed around, climbed trees, got holes in my trousers and muddied all my tops and things like that, a complete nightmare for the washing, but great fun. I would always put a bit of Maisie into everything.”

Arya’s biggest antagonist is her much more feminine and refined older sister, Sansa, played by Williams’ real-life friend Sophie Turner. Sansa is blindly devoted to the spoiled and corrupt Prince Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and even lied to protect him once.

“Arya thinks of Sansa as a bit iffy, sort of clueless as to what’s going on around her,” Williams explains. “She finds Sansa annoying as she’s always going on about princes and marrying and having children and Arya just thinks all that’s way, way in the future. It’s a waste of time. Joffrey is not very nice and she can see that, but Sansa can’t. Arya is definitely trying to get through to people what she knows, but sometimes it’s not always the best way and she gets into trouble.”

Trouble finds Arya, however, when the Lannister guards who had seized her father are now after her. Luckily, Braavosi fencing master Syrio Forel (Miltos Yerolemou), had taught her the rudiments of defending herself and runs interference for her. Williams never performed any kind of swordwork professionally and looked forward to learning the new skill for Game of Thrones.

“I picked it up pretty quickly,” she says. “I thought it would be like learning a dance routine. It’s like one move after another and you know the order it comes. You work together because you can’t just throw the sword any old place. You’ve got to do it in certain places so the reaction can come at the same time. Otherwise, it looks really fake.”

And although Williams doesn’t claim to be the best swordfighter, she at least tried to keep one aspect of Arya faithful to the character in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels on which Game of Thrones is based.

“I’m right-handed, and when Mom was reading the first book, she told me about Arya being left-handed,” she says. “From then on, I was like, ‘Alright, I’m going to try to do everything left-handed.’ When I was practicing out in the garden and things I would do left-handed just to feel that rhythm. Unfortunately, when it came to filming, sometimes I have to do things right-handed because of the camera angle and things like that. So some people are a bit annoyed that Arya hasn’t done everything left-handed. I wanted to. I really did. But sometimes it was just too tricky and we couldn’t do it.”

She consoles herself by noting that a Braavosi “water dancer” would probably be ambidextrous. “I’m sure Syrio would teach Arya to use both hands as well,” she says.

Game of Thrones has already been picked up for a second season, but until she returns to work sometime this summer, Williams is happy to stay far away from the Belfast, Ireland set.

“The main thing that I’m definitely not going to miss is when we were in Belfast,” she says. “The toilets that they had were full of spiders and I cannot stand spiders. They’re the scariest thing on this planet. It was just horrible. I dreaded going to the toilet over there.”

Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.

• Art direction: Winter is Coming, A Golden Crown, and Fire and Blood
• Costumes: The Pointy End
• Cinematography: Winter is Coming by Alik Sakharov, Lord Snow by Marco Pontecorvo, The Pointy End by Matthew Jensen
• Directing: Winter is Coming by Tim Van Patten, A Golden Crown by Daniel Minahan, Baelor by Alan Taylor
• Editing: Winter is Coming by Oral Norrie Ottey, A Golden Crown by Marty Nicholson, Baelor by Francesca Parker
• Hairstyling: A Golden Crown by Kevin Alexander and Candice Banks
• Makeup (Non-Prosthetic): Winter is Coming by Paul Engelen and Melissa Lackersteen
• Prosthetic Makeup: A Golden Crown by Paul Engelen and Conor O’Sullivan
• Sound Editing: A Golden Crown
• Sound Mixing: A Golden Crown
• Stunts: The Wolf and the Lion
• Writing: Baelor (ep. 9) by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
• Best Drama
• Best Casting
  
• Best Main Title Design
• Drama Lead Actor: Sean Bean
• Drama Lead Actress: Lena Headey
• Drama Supporting Actor: Mark Addy, Peter Dinklage, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Aiden Gillen, Kit Harington, and Jason Momoa
• Drama Supporting Actress: Emilia Clarke and Michelle Fairley

In related news, Game of Thrones has been nominated for the Critics Choice Awards as best drama series! June 20 is the decision date.

SOURCE: WinterIsComing.Net

If it can be said that the previous episode was the one in which all hell broke loose, then it could also be said that hell continued to break loose right into this episode. The opening scene is an outright bloodbath as Lannister soldiers continue slaughtering every member of House Stark in King’s Landing, save Sansa and Arya. Syrio’s fate is left uncertain after the ridiculously cool scene in which he takes on the Lannister soldiers with a wooden sword, giving Arya a chance to escape. I, of course, like to think that he survived.

Sansa has been the most unlikable Stark thus far, but this aspect of her character is now what finally make her situation interesting. She’s the only Stark in good standing with the Lannisters, so she has a lot of room to maneuver. I really can’t imagine Ned changing his mind and openly professing that he was wrong, but it was a pretty good try on Sansa’s part. Sansa is in a unique position in which, if she wanted to, she could begin building even more good faith with the Lannisters and lulling them into a false sense of trust, where she could then begin manipulating them. I think it would be a great direction for her character, and would give her more of an opportunity to actually affect the plot.

I don’t know how I got by without Tyrion last week, but I’m glad he’s back. The comic relief he brings to the table seems especially needed at a time like this. Poor Tyrion has escaped one mess, and ended up right in the middle of another. But his silver tongue and sharp wit have served him well, not to mention being able to fall back on the Lannister reputation for wealth and paying their debts. Now all he has to do is join the Stonecrows on the field of battle and survive. Oh, poor Tyrion. I do hope that you survive. It’s unfortunate that Tyrion is again being pitted against the Starks. He obviously bore no ill will toward the Starks, and has no real interest in his family’s political gambits. He has plenty of wealth to support his continued survival and habits, and that’s all he really needs to be happy.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff occurring as a result of the change in the status quo. Ned is down in the dungeon, and along comes Varys with some water. Though not there to rescue Ned, and he doesn’t seem interested in killing Ned out of mercy. He’s not willing to do anything that would put himself at risk. But he does give Ned some water to ensure that he doesn’t die of thirst down there, as well as information about what’s going on. I can’t quite figure Varys out here. Why even bother with Ned? Idle curiosity? Pity? I did enjoy the scene, as I do all scenes involving Varys. He’s such a strange, crafty creature. I like these wild card characters whose future actions are not easy to predict.

The forceful retirement of Ser Barristan Selmy does not strike me as being a very good idea. I believed him when he said he could slice up all of the other remaining Kingsguard. Considering that reaction, as well as Selmy’s reaction to the tearing up of the late King Robert’s orders, I wouldn’t be surprised if Selmy promptly joined up with the rebellion.

Robb Stark is a character that has felt bit under-developed until more recently. Robb has gradually become one of my favorite characters on the show, and I think that this is the episode where he finally gets a chance to prove what he’s capable of. It turns out that Robb makes for a pretty fierce leader. I love how he handles Greatjon. When Robb gives an order, you sure as hell better follow it. Based on initial impressions, Robb seems to be mounting a reasonably impressive offensive. The Stonecrows may give the Lannisters an advantage, but it’s difficult to make predictions so far.

Anyone who’s read my previous reviews can probably imagine what I thought of this epsiode’s events at the Wall. Syrio’s fight with the guards could still be the best scene of the episode, but Jon’s fight with the zombie came pretty close to equaling it. I never did understand why that little girl in the pilot episode seemingly came back to life. I’d always just assumed that she was a White Walker herself who was only pretending to be dead. But clearly, there’s a difference between the giant White Walkers themselves and those that they’ve “touched” and turned into these super-strong zombies whose only weakness is fire (though I still think they need to try taking off the head). I’m guessing now that this process that creates these zombies isn’t instantaneous, which is why you’ll find corpses that eventually spring back to life with creepy blue eyes. Anyways, I can’t express enough how much I enjoyed finally getting some supernatural action at the Wall. And Commander Mormont’s line to Samwell was funny. I can’t wait to see those White Walkers invade the south and shock everyone into working together in order to fight them (I wish).

I’m almost forgetting another one of the best scenes in the episode (which also ranks pretty close to Syrio’s fight with the guards and Jon’s fight with the zombie). The Dothraki are in the process of annihilating some unknown village so they can steal gold, which they’ll then use to get ships to take them across the sea. Daenerys isn’t happy to see all the raping going on, so she demands that the remaining women be given to her. The little exchange between Jorah and Dany here is as amusing as it is telling. Dany takes offense to being called a “gentle heart”, which doesn’t fit with the new image she’s trying to project at all.

Dany’s meddling in the Dothraki ways of war ends up offending one of the warriors, and he takes it up with Drogo. Hilariously, the situation completely backfires for Mago, turning out completely different from what I expected it to. Drogo is amused and impressed by how fearless his wife is getting, and lets her have the slaves. Mago immediately insults the Khal and challenges him to combat. Not a good idea, but I get that he probably didn’t have much of a choice, given how the Dothraki culture works. The fight scene is great because it reminds us, very clearly, why Drogo is the Khal. It’s because he’s the meanest, most badass Dothraki alive, plain and simple. He actually walks into Mago’s sword, just to prove how badass he is, before fighting him with no weapons, slicing Mago’s throat with his own blade, and finally ripping out Mago’s tongue right out of his throat. The scene is incredibly brutal, and awesome. But Dany needs to be more careful. I don’t think she can get away with this kind of cultural infraction all the time.

Osha once again has a short scene, this time with Bran next to the heart tree. Osha’s main purpose seems to be to provide insight into what’s really going on, behind-the-scenes. Her words provide more reason to worry about what’s going to happen when the White Walkers come. Once they get past the Wall, I’d guess that Winterfell would be their next target, and it doesn’t seem very well-defended at the moment. At least Osha seems to indicate that these things could be fought and driven back, if enough soldiers were sent north.

You may have noticed in the opening credits that George R. R. Martin himself actually wrote this episode. I didn’t notice any stylistic changes in the writing, though. As good as it was, this episode felt very much in sync with the rest of the show, which I suppose is either a compliment to Martin or to the show in general. Or perhaps both.

Regardless, I continue to be completely enthralled by this experience. It looks like an all-out war is coming, and there’s only two episodes left, so I’m hoping it doesn’t feel overly rushed. My other hope is that, if there is to be a war, that enough of the budget has been saved up to do it justice. Large battle scenes need a sense of scale that TV usually can’t deliver, but I’ll try to stay optimistic about it. As I’ve said before, “Game of Thrones” has far exceeded my expectations. So the hype surrounding these final two episodes far outweighs any doubts I might have.

Rating: 9/10

The conflict in Westeros shows no signs of letting up. King Robert was the only thing holding the kingdom together. With his “accidental” death, and the subsequent power vacuum, everything is descending into chaos. It’s hard to imagine how any good can come out of this. Cersei has taken power (through Joffrey), Ned is powerless, and the Dothraki are preparing to invade Westeros. How can the kingdom protect itself at a time like this?

I entertained the thought that Littlefinger might really have a hint of selflessness in him, but his betrayal fits too well with his characterization. Ned knew better than to trust him, but he gambled on the hope that Littlefinger’s friendship with Catelyn would keep Littlefinger on his side. Even I knew better than to trust him, but part of me really wanted to. And I think that speaks to how well the character worked. That incredibly long scene of exposition (or sexposition, as I’m now calling these scenes) at the brothel was probably a bit overly gratuitous, but the dialogue from Littlefinger adds weight to his later actions.

Though it would have still fit with his character if he we hadn’t been given further insight into his motivations. There was already ample evidence that he was plotting to get Ned out of the way, so Catelyn would be his for the taking. His dialogue just serves to further emphasize the connection between his interest in Catelyn and his actions over the course of the season.

We hadn’t seen any of Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly for two episodes now, so I was glad to get back to them for a bit. And I’m sure the Dire Wolf fans were glad to see more of Ghost as well. I had to laugh at Samwell this week. I wasn’t that into the character at first, but my opinion is beginning to change. I was impressed that Samwell so easily figured out why Jon was made Commander Mormont’s steward. And I loved his reaction to hearing that Pip was previously a singer.

I suppose I’ve started to get a little bit bored of seeing Jon Snow stuck at the Wall. So I was as disappointed as he was that he didn’t become a ranger. Still, the disappearance and likely death of Benjen Stark, as well as the sense that the White Walkers are creeping ever closer to the Wall, present promise that something big is about to happen. I’m thrilled by all the conflict going on in the rest of the kingdom, but more than anything I just want to know what the hell those White Walkers are, and what they want.

It was mentioned back in “The Wolf and the Lion” that Jorah was working as a spy for the crown, but it didn’t really register with me at the time. It was only in this episode, when Jorah makes his decision to save Daenerys from the assassination, that it became clear to me. Jorah’s involvement with Dany and the Dothraki would have taken on a slightly different tone for me if I hadn’t forgotten about that. Outwardly, Jorah seems extremely loyal to Dany. His deep desire to return home has complicated things. But it seems that he’s ready to give up his pardon in favor of saving Dany.

There are a number of different, fairly obvious reasons for why he might do this. His brief conversation with Dany before the assassination attempt did a marked job of putting the whole season into perspective. In the end, all this talk of honor and lines of succession don’t really matter. The one who rules, the one who wins, is the one with the power to do so. This is why Ned’s efforts have been so sadly futile. The season has been making this point clearer and clearer with each new episode. Whether or not Jorah really cares about Dany, he seems to have recognized that Westeros would be better off with Dany on the throne. At this point, I can’t disagree with him, but I wonder whether it will be worth all the inevitable bloodshed.

This is the lesson that poor Ned needs to learn: that no one else is playing by the rules, so all that really matters is that the best possible person ends up on the throne. It’s possible that Littlefinger might even have decided against betraying Ned if he’d been willing to set aside his honor for a bit and work with him. Littlefinger makes it pretty clear that Stannis Baratheon as king would not be good for the kingdom. Better to go with Robert’s last wishes and let Joffrey rule for a while. They can always get rid of him if need be, when the time comes. But Ned just won’t back down, and insists on Stannis being the only possible option. Now I’ve got to admit, I still love Ned in spite of all this, and find him to be a highly sympathetic central character, which makes his complete failure to handle the situation at King’s Landing all the more tragic.

“Game of Thrones” is doing an incredible job of creating that horrible feeling of inevitability, that everything is going to end in ruin. There’s bound to be a lot more death before the end of the season, but what the final status quo will be, I can scarcely venture to guess. “Game of Thrones” presents a world that, while certainly depressing much of the time, contains a large number of absolutely fascinating characters, so many of whom we want to see survive and live to see a more peaceful world. But considering that more seasons, based on more books, are on the way, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Rating: 9/10

The conflict in Westeros shows no signs of letting up. King Robert was the only thing holding the kingdom together. With his “accidental” death, and the subsequent power vacuum, everything is descending into chaos. It’s hard to imagine how any good can come out of this. Cersei has taken power (through Joffrey), Ned is powerless, and the Dothraki are preparing to invade Westeros. How can the kingdom protect itself at a time like this?

I entertained the thought that Littlefinger might really have a hint of selflessness in him, but his betrayal fits too well with his characterization. Ned knew better than to trust him, but he gambled on the hope that Littlefinger’s friendship with Catelyn would keep Littlefinger on his side. Even I knew better than to trust him, but part of me really wanted to. And I think that speaks to how well the character worked. That incredibly long scene of exposition (or sexposition, as I’m now calling these scenes) at the brothel was probably a bit overly gratuitous, but the dialogue from Littlefinger adds weight to his later actions.

Though it would have still fit with his character if he we hadn’t been given further insight into his motivations. There was already ample evidence that he was plotting to get Ned out of the way, so Catelyn would be his for the taking. His dialogue just serves to further emphasize the connection between his interest in Catelyn and his actions over the course of the season.

We hadn’t seen any of Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly for two episodes now, so I was glad to get back to them for a bit. And I’m sure the Dire Wolf fans were glad to see more of Ghost as well. I had to laugh at Samwell this week. I wasn’t that into the character at first, but my opinion is beginning to change. I was impressed that Samwell so easily figured out why Jon was made Commander Mormont’s steward. And I loved his reaction to hearing that Pip was previously a singer.

I suppose I’ve started to get a little bit bored of seeing Jon Snow stuck at the Wall. So I was as disappointed as he was that he didn’t become a ranger. Still, the disappearance and likely death of Benjen Stark, as well as the sense that the White Walkers are creeping ever closer to the Wall, present promise that something big is about to happen. I’m thrilled by all the conflict going on in the rest of the kingdom, but more than anything I just want to know what the hell those White Walkers are, and what they want.

It was mentioned back in “The Wolf and the Lion” that Jorah was working as a spy for the crown, but it didn’t really register with me at the time. It was only in this episode, when Jorah makes his decision to save Daenerys from the assassination, that it became clear to me. Jorah’s involvement with Dany and the Dothraki would have taken on a slightly different tone for me if I hadn’t forgotten about that. Outwardly, Jorah seems extremely loyal to Dany. His deep desire to return home has complicated things. But it seems that he’s ready to give up his pardon in favor of saving Dany.

There are a number of different, fairly obvious reasons for why he might do this. His brief conversation with Dany before the assassination attempt did a marked job of putting the whole season into perspective. In the end, all this talk of honor and lines of succession don’t really matter. The one who rules, the one who wins, is the one with the power to do so. This is why Ned’s efforts have been so sadly futile. The season has been making this point clearer and clearer with each new episode. Whether or not Jorah really cares about Dany, he seems to have recognized that Westeros would be better off with Dany on the throne. At this point, I can’t disagree with him, but I wonder whether it will be worth all the inevitable bloodshed.

This is the lesson that poor Ned needs to learn: that no one else is playing by the rules, so all that really matters is that the best possible person ends up on the throne. It’s possible that Littlefinger might even have decided against betraying Ned if he’d been willing to set aside his honor for a bit and work with him. Littlefinger makes it pretty clear that Stannis Baratheon as king would not be good for the kingdom. Better to go with Robert’s last wishes and let Joffrey rule for a while. They can always get rid of him if need be, when the time comes. But Ned just won’t back down, and insists on Stannis being the only possible option. Now I’ve got to admit, I still love Ned in spite of all this, and find him to be a highly sympathetic central character, which makes his complete failure to handle the situation at King’s Landing all the more tragic.

“Game of Thrones” is doing an incredible job of creating that horrible feeling of inevitability, that everything is going to end in ruin. There’s bound to be a lot more death before the end of the season, but what the final status quo will be, I can scarcely venture to guess. “Game of Thrones” presents a world that, while certainly depressing much of the time, contains a large number of absolutely fascinating characters, so many of whom we want to see survive and live to see a more peaceful world. But considering that more seasons, based on more books, are on the way, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Rating: 9/10

Gallery: Home > Season 1 > Episode Screen Captures > 1.05 The Wolf And The Lion

While I was restructuring things, I discovered that Coppermine wouldn’t recognize all the folders as it should and none if the usual checks I keep in mind, solved it. Rather than spend hours trouble-shooting it, I decided to reinstall and reupload because there wasn’t that many files in the gallery. Most of the current files up in the gallery there were uploaded by the previous site owner, Eli.

I also took this opportunity to replace some of the promotional photos and stills with higher quality versions,and also uploaded a bunch of new stills.