Game Of Thrones actor Joe Dempsie came to regret his joke about Gendry when the character was absent from the show.
Gendry, the son of King Robert, wasn’t on the show for a long time when in season three he hopped in a rowboat and made his way to King’s Landing.
His absence continued all the way to season seven, and after season four the actor joked that Robert’s bastard son was ‘Still rowin’.
It was a great, well-timed quip but it snowballed and became all-consuming for Joe.
He told Entertainment Weekly: ‘It became my daily life. There was no escaping it.’
Joe was welcomed back into the Westeros fold for season seven, but was nervous about returning as he had been away for so long.
‘It was like getting a call out of the blue, saying, “Hey, so do you fancy stepping into the biggest TV show on the planet?”‘
When fans saw Gendry again he was wielding a brand new weapon – a huge warhammer – which he took with him on his journey north of the Wall.
To prepare himself, Joe was told to practice with a real hammer to make it look like he knew his way around it.
However, when he came to set, he was shocked to be given a foam hammer instead.
The actor pushed himself physically, spending ‘three months like a psychopath in my garden, swinging a sledgehammer around’.
‘I was the strongest I’ve ever been, trying to make a foam hammer look heavy,’ he said.
Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss recently spoke about how they would struggle to get back to normal life after being immersed in Westeros for so many years.
‘It’s the best job I’ve ever had or ever likely will have’ Benioff told Entertainment Weekly.
He added: ‘You have all these characters you love and you can come up with ideas for them, and a few months later these incredible actors will be saying those things. That’s such a rare gift.’
Weiss weighed in: ‘If 10 years ago somebody had given me a chance to write a ticket, I wouldn’t have been crazy enough to write a ticket to something this great.’
The newly released season eight trailer, which contains a hint of Gendry but seemingly zero Greyjoys, teased the epic battles in store for all the surviving characters as the HBO show hurtles to its climax.
Game Of Thrones returns 14 April to Sky Atlantic and HBO
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