HBO has announced the core cast and director of the Game of Thrones prequel which we are currently (and unofficially) calling The Long Night. Fellow nerds, I recommend getting your Kermit Arm Flail gif ready before reading on.
Entertainment Weekly revealed that The Long Night‘s pilot episode will be directed by SJ Clarkson, whose directorial credits include Orange Is the New Black, Dexter, Bates Motel, and the pilot for Jessica Jones. She will also directing the next Star Trek film.
Furthermore, eight actors more have been added to the cast list, bringing the total number of known cast members up to ten. Josh Whitehouse and Naomi Watts were previously announced as the show leads.
Naomi Ackie
This British actress previous appeared in 2017’s Lady Macbeth and also has an upcoming role in Star Wars: Episode IX.
Denise Gough
Though she’s best known for her stage performances in Angels in America and People, Places and Things, Gough also portrayed Marquise de Belbeuf in last year’s film, Colette.
Sheila Atim
You might have seen her as Limehouse Nell on Hulu’s Harlots, but she also played several characters in the Donmar Warehouse’s filmed All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy.
Ivanno Jeremiah
The British actor will appear in the upcoming film The Flood. You can also see him on Netflix’s Black Mirror and AMC’s Humans.
Georgie Henley
The 23-year old actress is still probably best known for playing Lucy Pevensie in the film adaptations of C.S Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. Hopefully, her role in The Long Night as well as Starz’s upcoming series, The Spanish Princess will help her establish herself as an adult actress in her own right.
Alex Sharp
The stage actor won a Tony Award in 2015 for his lead role in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.
Toby Regbo
He played young Albus Dumbledore in last year’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Aethelred in The Last Kingdom, but perhaps his most Game of Thrones-y role to date was as the tragic Prince Francis on Starz’ Reign.
Jamie Campbell Bower
The second Fantastic Beasts alum to be cast in The Long Night, Campbell Bower also played King Arthur on Starz’ Camelot as well as the silver-voiced sailor, Anthony, in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Sweeney Todd. If we get anymore songs from A Song of Ice and Fire set to music in The Long Night, I wouldn’t mind if Campbell Bower is chosen to sing them. By the way, Campbell played Ser Waymar Royce in the unaired Game of Thrones pilot, though he was recast for the reshoots and we never ended up seeing him in the show. He’s got a second chance now!
Though very little is known about the the plot or the characters, it certainly looks as though The Long Night will be a more racially diverse and female-centered show than Game of Thrones, which (as others have long pointed out) has always featured an overwhelmingly white cast.
As dearly tempting as it is to speculate who these actors might be playing (all Dumbledore/Grindelwald comments aside, do Campbell Bower and Regbo look enough alike to play brothers or is that just me?), we have to remember that The Long Night (or whatever the official title will be) will take place in a fundamentally different Planetos than we’re familiar with.
“There’s no King’s Landing. There’s no Iron Throne. There are no Targaryens — Valyria has hardly begun to rise yet with its dragons and the great empire that it built,” George R.R. Martin told Entertainment Weekly back in November. “We’re dealing with a different and older world and hopefully that will be part of the fun of the series.”
