By Dustin Rowles | Game of Thrones | October 28, 2015 |
By Dustin Rowles | Game of Thrones | October 28, 2015 |
Old, previous season Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead spoilers ahead.
It’s a little thing, but you know what annoys me? When an actor whose character has been killed off a series says something like, “I’m happy to do whatever it takes to serve the story best.”
Bullshit! No you’re not. You think IronE Singleton was happy to serve the story on The Walking Dead? Or Emily Kinney? Or Laurie Holden? I mean, no offense, but those actors are never going to be as popular again as they were on The Walking Dead. I’m sure Richard Madden wasn’t like, “I can’t wait to serve the story on Game of Thrones so that I can move on with my life of playing members of royalty on British television miniseries!”
No! Maybe you understand why your character is killed off, but no one is happy about losing a steady paycheck and weekly visibility on one of the most popular shows on the planet. No one, except Josh Charles.
So, I find it refreshing that Ian McElhinney — who played Ser Barristan Selmy on Game of Thrones — is expressing frustration about his character being cruelly killed off the series. He’s pissed, and he should be! The advisor to Daenerys Targaryen was killed off last season, despite the fact that his character continues to live on in the novels.
As he told an audience at a London Comic Con event, he was “miffed” that his character was killed off, when asked how he felt:
“Truthfully, miffed,” he said. “But I knew before I even saw the script because I got the schedule. Unfortunately I’d read the books, so I had expectations for season five.“As soon as I got the schedule I thought, ‘There’s something not here’, because I thought I’d be doing more scenes. In fact I was doing less. So immediately I thought, ‘They must be writing me out’.”
He added that he would have liked showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss to have spoken to him to confirm his departure.
“If I’m honest, I was a bit disappointed by that. I felt I should have known, it wouldn’t have made any difference but I felt that as a matter of just courtesy, I should have known.
“I was disappointed because I had enjoyed playing the part and I was looking forward to getting more meat in the part and I had dared to presume that I would at least go into season six.
“I obviously shouldn’t have dared to presume. So be it. The deed is done and I’m on to other things and that’s that. But I do miss it. I would have happily stayed on.”
Damn straight, McElhinney! I mean, it was a cool death scene and a pretty great episode, and I didn’t really care about the character that much, but hell yes, you’re disappointed! Now you gotta go back to playing the lead in productions of The 10 Commandments in some struggling Irish theater six nights a week for a tenth of the money. Nobody wants that, no matter how well it serves a story.
via Digital Spy