Game Of Thrones actor John Bradley has told how playing his character Samwell Tarly gave him a permanent stutter and ‘would trip him up’ during filming.
The star spoke honestly and openly about his ‘performance anxiety’ on the Blank Podcast with Giles Paley-Phillips and comedian Jim Daly.
He explained how he got into a trap with his character and it got to the point where he lost control.
‘Towards the end of Game Of Thrones, it became the only way I could act, and I got into the unconscious mindset that people want me to do this,’ he began.
‘I got into this trap with Sam, I set myself traps, because he had a traumatic childhood and suffered a lot – and it manifested through a stammer and a twitch sometimes.
‘It can cause psychological barriers to show how he was brought up in a highly charged environment and he was almost frightened to speak and he’s not sure whether he’s allowed to speak or to express his opinion on things and so I thought how am I going to show that?’
The 31-year-old went on to explain that by the middle of Game Of Thrones he lost complete control of when he stammered or not.
He added: ‘There are takes of me where it felt like it would be five minutes where I am just standing with other the actors and I couldn’t speak and I just can’t get the words out and certain sounds would trip me up.
‘In one scene I came in first with Kit Harrington and in the nicest way he said to me “can you come in a bit quicker?” so I can react a bit quicker and I was like “I can’t, I just can’t”.
‘As lovely as the crew were, they assumed it was because I had forgotten my lines. It took me a while to get out of it and it went away over time.’
His stutter playing Sam has also affected his acting jobs outside of GOT.
‘When I was in character I developed a stammer that I wasn’t in control of and it’s hard enough to be an actor anyway without having to read a script the night before you were going to do it and thinking that’s really going to trip me up tomorrow and the more you think about it the worse it gets,’ he exclaimed.
‘Towards the end of that journey, that stammer would turn up in non-Sam acting and I’d do auditions when I’d stammer because it just seemed like the default place that I went to when I acted.
‘I think people thought it was part of me but it wasn’t, but it was performance anxiety.’
Game Of Thrones: The Complete Collection is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray.
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