Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy) has done a lot of growing since his early days on Game of Thrones, when he was “confused, nervous and lost.” Indeed, after settling into the role of Theon Greyjoy, he even got an Emmy nomination. “I’d said goodbye to Thrones but then I got to end [the show] on a positive note,” he recently told Esquire. “I think that pressure that I might have put on myself just disappeared in series four or five. I think it just became a normal part of my life.”
And since the show ended, Allen’s been busier than ever, most recently starring in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, which is up for an Oscar for Best Picture! Allen talked about working on such a potentially uncomfortable film — it’s a comedy-drama set during Hitler’s Third Reich — especially since he played played the second-in-command to a Nazi army officer.
At first, Allen wasn’t sure he could something like that off. “Obviously the script is hilarious but I couldn’t really visually picture what was going on,” he said, and fair enough. How do make things funny when your movie is set in Nazi Germany, albeit one revolving around a member of the Hitler Youth who has Adolf Hitler (Waititi) as an imaginary friend?
It’s such a delicate subject that you already feel like a naughty child walking into the cinema, so you’ve already got this sense of naivety and innocence instilled in you.
Indeed, the movie has come under a lot of criticism for handling a sensitive topic with humor and satire. How did Allen approach that feeling on set? “It was an unspoken thing all the time,” he remembered. “You arrive and you’re in a warehouse full of Gestapo and Nazi uniforms and so immediately it felt dystopian as f**k. Definitely there were some points where I thought ‘that didn’t really feel right’, but you know that you’re in the hands of somebody who is going to make it work.”
Despite some blowback, Allen is hopeful that they can get the message they want to across to audiences.
We’re trying to hammer home that it’s an anti-hate satire. It’s a movie steeped in positive messages and it’s about love. […] This is a story about a single mother and her trying to do best for her boy. I think that’s beautiful.
I guess when you look at it that way, it sort of makes sense. Leave it to Allen to help us see the light in a dark place.
Of course, Allen’s role on Jojo Rabbit was nothing like his role on Game of Thrones. As Theon, Allen was suffering pretty much non-stop. But here…
It was so fun getting to do something so comedic and mess around with timing. Being on Thrones, especially with my character, they didn’t really allow much of that.
Did we ever even see Theon laugh? Maybe in the early seasons. Certainly not after…the Ramsay years.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, Alfie Allen thinks the divisive reaction to the final season was blown out of proportion. “[I] can’t really remember ever having that much of a negative experience with any fans.”
Somebody came up to me the other day in the street and was like ‘Oh man, the arc of your character, and the whole way Game of Thrones ended was just so disappointing!’ I was just standing there and he came up to me to let me know it was sh*t. I was just like ‘Thanks man!
Yikes!
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