Working on a project as big as Game of Thrones is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The fame that comes with being part of something so big exceeds that of the fortune you inherit from the show. People begin to recognize you by your character and remember you by your contribution. Sometimes this has the opposite effect on the career of an actor, who gets typecasted for the same kind of characters. It becomes difficult for them to find a different kind of role, something that has been repeatedly pointed out by Peter Dinklage, and was one of the biggest fears of John Bradley.
Bradley rose to stardom after playing Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington’s) best friend Samwell Tarly on Game of Thrones. However, after Thrones was over, it took nearly two years for Bradley to land another major role in the rom-com Marry Me. He told Yahoo! News, “It was the first part that really came to me since I left Game of Thrones. I’d been in Game of Thrones for 10 years and when you played…a specific part with specific psychology, and specific character traits for such a long time, you’re just desperate for something different.”
“It didn’t feel like anybody was really going to offer me anything different to that. I got a lot of very similar parts, really, and then one day this script came through for this ever so slightly bumbling but also quite confident and quite sharp and quite capable music manager, operating at the top of that kind of entertainment pyramid. I just thought that would have given me so much scope to play a lot of different aspects of my own personality that I’ve never played before.”
“Because enough people have seen Marry Me now, I feel comfortable to play some of the old favourites again,” Bradley said. “My character in Moonfall, it’s kind of similar to my character in Game of Thrones, I suppose, in terms of somebody that’s very smart, but somebody who nobody will listen to, and the frustrations of knowing you’re right and nobody giving you the time of day, I played similar things like that before.”
“Ever since Marry Me…I don’t feel the pressure to necessarily shy away from similar parts to what I played before because I feel I operated in Marry Me in a completely different atmosphere, a completely different environment and a completely different type of film.”
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