Daniel Ings (Lyonel Baratheon) said, “Let’s talk Hodor” on meeting George R.R. Martin for the first time

Most actors cast in a beloved franchise would immediately binge every available episode. Daniel Ings took the opposite approach — he showed up to film A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a prequel to one of television’s most culturally defining series, having deliberately avoided Game of Thrones entirely. And when he finally did come face-to-face with George R.R. Martin? He had exactly one thing on his mind.

Quick read:

• Daniel Ings intentionally skipped Game of Thrones while filming Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
• He finally binged the franchise only after production wrapped
• His first real question for George R.R. Martin at the Germany premiere was about Hodor

Keeping the tone his own

It wasn’t ignorance; it was a deliberate creative choice. Ings made a calculated decision to stay away from Westeros while he was still living inside it. “I thought, Well, I don’t want to. This show’s tone is so different. So I avoided it,” he explained to Vulture. There’s something almost admirable about that kind of discipline on a production this massive.

Rather than let the weight of what came before color every scene, he built his performance from the ground up, free of expectation and free of comparison. Only after the cameras stopped rolling did he finally sit down and watch.

One question, one legend, one name: Hodor

When Ings first crossed paths with Martin on set, the two “had some good chats,” but nothing particularly weighty. That changed at Knight‘s premiere in Germany. Having now watched all of Thrones, Ings arrived with the kind of burning question only a freshly converted superfan could muster. “I was like, ‘Hey, man, let’s talk Hodor,’” he told Vulture.

Honestly, same. Of all the things to unpack with the man who built this world, the wars, the dragons, the politics, Hodor is exactly the emotional gut-punch you’d want to go back to first. It says everything about the kind of viewer Ings turned out to be.

Watch A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Max and let us know in the comments which moment hit you hardest.

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