Game of Thrones finally came to an end after eight seasons, and now is the time for actor interviews looking back on the show. The latest is from John Bradley, who played Samwell Tarly on the show, who discussed the ending of Game of Thrones in a recent interview. Read on!
Bradley recently had a sitdown with The Hollywood Reporter. He started off by talking about how it felt to give an interview after the end of the show:
“Ah, it’s such a weird feeling. (Laughs.) It’s so weird to know you can be completely candid about everything without risking the wrath of anybody. Having answers to some of those questions out there is such a liberating experience.”
We saw in the finale that Sam brought a book with him called A Song of Ice and Fire, written by Archmaester Ebrose, with the title suggested by Sam himself. Speaking of this, John said:
“I was really thrilled about how [Benioff and Weiss] handled that. It was a combination of fan service and a slight little twist. A lot of people know George and the Tolkien template he’s used in his series from the start. A lot of people maybe predicted Sam would have devised the narrative of the Song of Ice and Fire book, and it would be a meta-textuality in how the series ends: Sam writing the books, the drama that everyone’s just watched. It would have been an interesting way to end it.”
He continued:
“But because so many people were predicting that, but at the last second there’s a slight diversion from people’s predictions — that it wasn’t Sam, but Archmaester Ebrose (Jim Broadbent) who wrote A Song of Ice and Fire, and Sam just came up with the title — it was such a delicious twist in the tale. We nearly gave the predictors what they wanted. It must have been so frustrating, but also thrilling, for people who predicted it. It was really clever, to pull the rug out from under those feet, nearly giving them exactly what they wanted, but taking it away at the last minute … it was an evil but delicious thing to do.
He also spoke about the small council scene we last see Sam in:
“Filming that scene was a really beautiful experience. There was such a sense of character around that table. A lot of the criticisms that have been aimed at this season is we relied on spectacle and a huge CGI budget, that it’s very cinematic but an element of characterization is gone. But I think certain parts of this episode, and especially this scene, give the lie to that attitude. What you have around this table are five very strong characters. What you’re watching when you watch this scene are these extreme personality types butting heads and trying to find a way to coexist and get on as well as they possibly can for the greater good.”
Well, what did you think about Sam’s and the show’s ending? Talk to us in the comments, down below!
