Joe Dempsie (Gendry) came back to Game of Thrones after his character rowed out of sight all the way back in season 3. Fast forward to season 7, and the bastard son of Robert Baratheon once again graced our television screens as he joined the fight against the Army of the Dead. As the eighth and final season approaches, Dempsie has been reflecting back on his interesting and unique journey with the series.
Dempsie spoke with The Post about what this experience has been like, and what the filming the final season was like for him:
In hindsight, I’ve had the perfect journey through. To be in something from the start is obviously quite special, but there’s a naiveté to it. None of us really knew what we were getting ourselves in for. When I left the show at the end of Season 3, it was starting to gain popularity. It felt like event television.
Dempsie was there at the start and will be there at the end but missed the middle, when he just watched the show grow into a global phenomenon. I think he’s the only cast member who can say that.
At this point, let’s quickly recap exactly who Gendry is. Profession? Blacksmith. Family? The bastard son of Robert Baratheon. For the first three seasons of the series, Gendry traveled alongside Arya until Melisandre brought him to Dragonstone to be a human sacrifice, but he escaped with the help of Davos Seaworth, who also brought him back into the fold years later.
Dempsie spoke about how being in the series at at the two ends times gave him a different perspective:
It was amazing [after Season 3] to take a step back and be able to watch the show become this monster hit that it is now. Every year, you’d see the hysteria surrounding it grow. Then, to get the call back [for the final two seasons] having had that distance [in Seasons 4-6], I think that’s the only time you can really appreciate the size of it. I didn’t take a second of it for granted, going back. I’d started to a little, towards the end of Season 2. When you’re in the eye of the storm, it’s hard to see the scale of it all.
The world celebrated and simultaneously freaked out over Gendry’s return in season 7, and Dempsie recalls trying to keep it all under wraps only to have someone record his scene on a King’s Landing beach from the other side of the water. The fervor to get a scoop on the show was and is pretty fierce, which is why HBO kept everything about season 8 so tightly under wraps.
Thanks to the season 8 trailer, we know that Gendry will be Winterfell come the new episodes. That means he’ll soon see his old friend Arya again. Dempsie talked about what the experience of seeing Maisie Williams on set again was like, and what it was like to see the other actors living their best lives:
It’s been nice seeing her around on set. In terms of whether [we] have scenes together, you’ll have to wait and see. The nice thing about this season is because everyone’s converging, you do get to have scenes with characters you never got to work with before. You’ve seen them in a bar at the end of an evening, but you’ve never gotten to stand opposite a camera from them. Seeing [Peter] Dinklage in the flesh doing his thing is pretty remarkable.
As we anxiously await the final season of Game of Thrones, we can’t help but wonder if Gendry could be in the line for the Throne (you never know). Time will answer all our questions but Joe Dempsie promises an emotional season ahead. We can’t wait.
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