Ed Sheeran wanted to love his Game Of Thrones cameo but everyone “muddied” his “joy”
Sheeran made a guest appearance on Games Of Thrones in 2017
Aux News Ed Sheeran
Singer Ed Sheeran has had his fair share of guest appearances on television shows and films over the years, such as Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016), The Simpsons, Yesterday, and Amazon’s Modern Love series. However, his most controversial appearance happened in 2017, when he took on a small role in HBO’s lauded fantasy series Games Of Thrones.
Sheeran accepted the guest role as a Lannister soldier in the premiere of the seventh season; the episode was called “Dragonstone.”
During an interview on Armchair Expert hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, Sheeran reminisced about the positive filming experience and how much public opinion singed afterward.
“It was great,” he said about the cameo, but added, “I feel like people’s reaction to it sort of muddied my joy to it.”
People were indeed miffed about Sheeran’s appearance in the fictional world of Westeros. The backlash was so severe Sheeran deactivated his Twitter account for a brief moment.
“I feel like I pissed off a lot of people by being in that, but anytime I meet someone that is like, ‘Oh you cameoed on that show,’ I’m like, ‘What would you say?’” he said.
“Everyone would say yes. I was a fan of the show; they asked me to be in it. I didn’t expect there to be that much backlash but I am definitely more careful when I am offered cameos now,” Sheeran added.
While his appearance in the series may seem a bit random, it was actually a surprise planned for GOT actor Maisie Williams. At the time her character, Arya Stark, was not expected to make it to the end of the season, most likely set to be killed off in some battle or by a dragon or something. As a gift to the actor, they brought Sheeran on for a cameo.
“She’s always been awesome,” Sheeran says of Williams. “I don’t think they had written the ending yet. It was meant to be her last season but it wasn’t. And as a surprise for her, [they got] me on. So, she was meant to turn up on set. and I was by the fire.”
In “Dragonstone,” the two share a short scene around a fireplace. Sheeran even sings a little moral booster about the warmth of a woman’s hands. To satiate the jeering public, Sheeran wished for the brutal death of his character in the impending battle. However, it was later confirmed the ginger-haired soldier named Eddie endured an injury during battle, resulting in his eyelids burning off, which may be a fate worse than death.
99 Comments
I guess I was fortunate not to know what Ed Sheeran looked like. He just scanned as another minor character to me, though a bit muppet-y.
I was (and still am really) only vaguely aware of who he is.I don’t know why it would be an issue. Is he like Justin Bieber or the Paul brothers or something? Why did people get upset?
My understanding is that he’s a pop star, and his thing is that he looks like he has no business being one? I only heard his music after people said one of his songs ripped off TLC’s No Scrubs. (Left Eye, R.I.P.)
He had a horrible hit song that was inescapable a few years back. I shudder when I recall the “Shape Of You”/”Despacito” Summer…
In season three there was a cameo from Sigur Ros. Sheeran felt like a real step down. At the time the show was also on its way to mediocrity. It sort of felt like salt being rubbed in the wound.
He’s known for being extremely popular for a few years even though his music output generally ranges from average to cynical trash.I’m the kind of person who bounces off contemporary pop really hard and I can’t stand his music but I have no ill will towards him as a person. The people who get mad at him are just irrational assholes. For some reason people were especially hard on him about his appearance which seems especially assholish to me.
Ed Sheeran has the benefit of looking funny and having actually worked his way into the industry by grinding away doing pub gigs and the like for a handful of years.
This makes him just about the most authentic musician to have hit the mainstream British charts in years, which led to the press constantly wanking him off at the time that episode came out.
Unlike the two you mentioned, Sheeran seems like a really nice guy, but still having a Bieber-level celebrity in this otherwise grimdark fantasy show was a little distracting.
He does seem like a nice guy, but his music leaves me very cold. See also James Blunt.
People got upset because they like to have reasons to be upset about things. Nerd ragers like to nerd rage.
Same here. I’d probably heard of Sheeran at the time, but had no idea what he looked like. His acting wasn’t notably bad, so as far as I was concerned he was just some extra. It was only the next day when I saw how many people had decreed that his appearance was somehow the worst thing ever and a crime against the viewing public.
I liked that scene, honestly. Reminding the audience/Arya that not every Lannister is like Tywin/Cersei felt like a good use of time.
What I liked about the scene is that it was actually, for once in the goddamn season ,hopeful. After all the killing , betrayals , and depression , a 5 or 6 minute scene with someone singing a hopeful song was actually fantastic . Yes, you know its Ed Sheeran, but that shock lasts for 2 seconds, then you enjoy his little campfire song, hear about what regular grunts want out of the war, and then its gone. Its what GOT needed more of .
My favourite description of him is “Ed Sheeran looks like the sort of person who would queue up to meet Ed Sheeran”
Same here.
I fail to see how anyone could’ve successfully avoided a presence as depressingly ubiquitous as Ed Sheeran. Your life is richer than mine will ever be.
I don’t know about richer, but definitely more out of touch. I mostly discover media through recommendations and personal interests, and Sheeran’s music was off my radar for a very long time.
Once you reach a certain age it’s not difficult at all to avoid supposedly ubiquitous popular culture. It’s especially easy if you don’t listen to the radio or watch TV when it’s broadcast.
Pretty much, yeah. It certainly becomes more true as you age, but I’ve been like this since my tweens. I had limited access to TV and only listened to radio shows hosted by my friends — as a teen/young adult — who were more into underground stuff.I just didn’t have a lot of exposure to pop — still don’t. Best way I can illustrate: first time I heard Ginuwine’s Pony was in 2014 (got made fun of quite a bit).It’s not that I don’t like it — a lot of it I downright love! — but I don’t seek it out. I either have to hear it by accident in a public place or have a friend recommend it to me before taking interest.
I have literally never heard that song, or to my knowledge, anything by Ginuwine. I’m not proud of my lack of interest in and exposure to popular music. It’s just a fact, and it’s been this way to some extent since I was in my early twenties. In fact, even when I was a teenager, in spite of my encyclopedic knowledge of the musical genres I was into, I probably wouldn’t have recognized the majority of top 40 songs.
I had to check that Ginuwine wasn’t something Parks & Rec made up for the sake of a gag.
Haha awesome! It wasn’t just me!
Good thing he’s super rich then. Other wise he’d just have to be sad about his Trump hair and wonky eye. Maybe also his inability to write songs of any noticeable substance. There’s crooning, and then there’s fluff whinging.
I didn’t know who he was either, although I do remember the uproar online after the episode. I’m not into music to begin with, I never listen to the radio unless it’s NPR, and I even stopped listening to that during the reign of the real life Joffrey.
One of those Muppets that really sucks and nobody likes but you put him in to fill out background and chorus numbers.
Who expected arya not to survive to the end? No one who was paying attention
He’s right! People were weird about it!They really bury the lede with Arya being not supposed to make it past that particular season; that would’ve been quite a surprise.
Yeah, that part’s downright shocking to me.
That seems really hard to believe. Makes you wonder if that’s the way the books are going, but it seems like it would be pretty pointless to spend that much time on her journey only to kill her off before the last season.It also makes you wonder how late in the game it was when they decided to have Arya kill the Night King, if she wasn’t supposed to be around for that at all…
It’s almost certainly something that Sheeran either assumed, or someone who didn’t know better said to him – there’s no way in hell Arya was going to be killed off.
It’s maybe more likely that they were going to potentially recast her and then they changed their minds – not everyone who played a GoT character played them all the way through the show’s run. Maybe they intended to recast an “older Arya” in place of Maisie after leaving her storyline at some point and this detail was game-of-telephone’d until it was the “possibility Arya is killed off Season 1″, but it’s probably still most likely that Sheeran just got this fact wrong.
Is there a particular reason people hate him other than just not liking his music or thinking he’s over exposed? Like, did he actually do anything abhorrent that I just haven’t heard about yet?
“At the time her character, Arya Stark, was not expected to make it to the end of the season”…what? There’s no way D&D were thinking of killing Arya.
Indeed. Arya, Tyrion and probably Daenerys were the 3 safest characters on the show.
Well Tyrion could hide in a teacup, he shoulda been pretty safe.
Yea this just read like some bullshit AV Club made up.
Actually it was Sheeran: “She’s always been awesome,” Sheeran says of Williams. “I don’t think they had written the ending yet. It was meant to be her last season but it wasn’t. And as a surprise for her, [they got] me on. So, she was meant to turn up on set. and I was by the fire.”But yeah I’m sure he’s mistaken there.
Eh I kinda thought it felt like she would never reunite with her family. And the way they did it was tidier than anything that happens in the books and earlier seasons. They could have killed her.
This should have been our first indication that something was very wrong with these fans. None of them really deserve nice things.
Hey, Ed, if it helps, I had absolutely no idea who you were when that episode aired (I still only barely know who you are now), so your cameo didn’t bother me in the slightest!
Yes, I’m sure he read your comment and is delighted to know that some jackass on the internet is pretending not to know who he is.
Why be mad at Ed Sheeran about this? If I was even minorly famous, I would try to be on Game of Thrones, too. The showrunners should absolutely not have allowed it, but that’s on them, not Ed Sheeran.
The band Mastodon appeared as extras in the series multiple times but nobody recognized them or complained because they’re not as famous. I thought the backlash over Sheeran being in the show was dumb. He looked like he fit right in.
I’m fortunate enough to not be bothered with either cameo because I’m not even familiar with any of their works or what they’d look like. I guess, if I picture it like if it was Damon Albarn or Tony Parker, I can see why it would be annoying.
And Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson cut Sean Bean’s head off!
I think he would have remained a recurring character, had it not been for his cancer diagnosis (thought to be terminal, now thankfully in remission).
Now his story would make a great film!
He was aiming for Sean Astin.
Were they the dragons? Or were they the boobs?
It was like way way back when George Lucas cast N*Sync to be some random Jedi in the background of that arena scene in Attack of the Clones. A bunch of nerds threw a goddamn fit and they called it off.
Ed Sheeran was a regular on a TV show 4 years before doing the cameo on GoT.It was seriously just a dumb complaint by fans who didn’t like Sheeran’s music.
I don’t like Ed Sheeran’s music and I still think it’s a dumb complaint.
Not liking Ed Sheeran’s music isn’t dumb; it’s common sense.
Yeah if it’s me there’s absolutely NO way I turn them down. The whole fucking internet could fuck off too, cause I’d be on GAME OF FUCKING THRONES.
You think he got to meet that chick with the eyebrows that don’t match her head?
Didn’t he sing on the show? Were people having a problem with that? If so, then studios should start casting mummers, singers and other tradition artists to appear in their period shows. People sang a hell of a lot back then. And they usually weren’t very handsome guys.
He sure did:
“Summon the minstrel for to entertain us, ‘ere we battle the dragons and snow zombies!”
*Ed Sheeran enters and starts to sing*
“Now kill the minstrel that we may be amused ‘ere we have lunch!”
*Ed Sheeran is repeatedly stabbed in his belly and face and nads and ass to great hilarity*
Yeah, there’s plenty to be mad at Ed Sheeran about. Like every note of his shitty music.
I hated the final season of GoT and I don’t care much for Ed Sheeran… but the bellyaching over this cameo was over the top. Popular musician plays musician in bit part of popular show as a favor to well-liked actress playing well-liked character seems like an odd thing to go nuts over, but I remember it happening.
Cameos are fun.As long as the dressing and make-up departments do a good job of making the cameo character feel aesthetically matching to everyone else and the directors and writers don’t go out of their way to make it seem like an obnoxious self-insert, then cameos are fun.I didn’t get the hate of his one. He just showed up as a guard, talked a bit like one and then left right? Admittedly it’s been a while but I don’t remember it being particularly egregious.
He sang a campfire song, so there was a little more attention on him than the usual disposable random impending-murder-victim on that show, but it wasn’t bad at all in itself.
He sang a song, and I believe the camera lingered on him just a bit longer than necessary, like “see, see? It’s a famous modern guy!”Personally I had no idea who he was, but the way the cameo played out I assumed he was some kind of celebrity and other people would recognize him.
*sing*
“99 dragons ‘n boobs on the wall, 99 dragons ‘n boobs…”
Hello Ms. Streep. Would you like to be a stormtrooper? There’s no lines, you’ll be wearing a helmet and there’s very little chance you’ll get an Oscar.
The backlash towards this cameo is how I learned who Ed Sheeran was. I just thought he was an extra with a nice singing voice. I was very surprised by how upset people were by it.
People were upset because it was kind of like sticking James Corden into a Rust Cohle scene of True Detective so that it can cross over with a tonight show interview
Poor dude will have to cry himself to sleep on his bed made out of gold, with Bianca and Paulina handing him thousand pound notes to wipe his tears. While the image is in my mind I bet Sheeran looks super bad when he’s crying.
I can’t believe I’m about to defend Ed Sheeran, but come on now, this is a pretty reasonable and minor complaint. He didn’t act like it was the end of the world, and it’s not like he wrote and published this article, as far as we know.
I was pretty mad about it. His appearance took what would have been a touching illustration of the impact of the wars on ordinary Westerosi people and instead made it a sort of joke. Completely took me out of the scene. And I can’t stand his music. But I’m not mad at him. He didn’t just go to wardrobe and jump in front of the camera. That was someone else’s idea.
That was the main complaint “It took me out of the scene” I never got it but its likely a specific age group thing. But hey its the internet being unreasonably negative about minutiae is the standard.
Use better punctuation the next time you want to insult me.
Exactly my point
Morale booster. Nor moral.
On the subject of people pissed off about the last couple seasons of GOT, I just re-watched the whole show, and to my surprise they were actually quite good. I’m being 100% serious right now; I kept waiting for it to get to the point where it would start to suck, but I enjoyed it right down to the finale. Yes, I will acknowledge that you can recognize the difference in storytelling once they got past what was in the books, and yes there are some parts require more suspension of disbelief than they should have. But from roughly season 5 forward they were also producing arguably the most ambitious television that’s ever been made, at least as far as the action and effects are concerned. The series as a whole pivots from being a very faithful adaptation of the books and a more character conflict-driven drama to an epic action / war show, but it’s still hugely entertaining.I think a lot of why I felt different about it is due to how I watched it; in the original run expectations were sky high and this time they were decidedly lower, and the biggest difference was how I interpreted Daenerys’ arc. I obviously didn’t watch her thinking she’s be the ultimate hero in the end this time, so all the time she was needlessly cruel or brutal towards her enemies definitely stood out for me. I still couldn’t quite feel it when she decided to burn Kings Landing but it wasn’t nearly as much of a shock this time.
I didn’t think it was terrible, but I did think it could have been better. I’d also argue that the last two or three episodes should have probably been five or six. Which is an especially weird thing for me to say, since I’m always railing about TV shows these days dragging things out for too long.
I wonder if the series flows better in a binge watch – from what I remember, my main complaint for the last few seasons was how much wheel-spinning there was, just week after week where barely anything happened, and then the actual conflict is all crammed into a handful of episodes at the end.
I recently watched Sharp Things in a day and loved it, and I was surprised by how many reviews there were complaining about the slow pacing. For me, the pacing was great – but then, I didn’t have to wait ten weeks to find out who the killer was, so I was happy to soak up the ambiance.
Yes, I would say that binging does help, the last two seasons felt like they were action-packed compared to how I remember them. also they kinda lean on the earlier seasons a bit for their emotional impact because the characters were written so damn well in the first four seasons, and all that was fresh in my mind because I had watched it all so recently.
It’s all about expectations. I usually got excited about the show, but for some unknown reason I barely thought about the show in the year leading up to the final season, and I thought the season was fine (obviously not great, but not terrible either). But I can see how people who were anticipating the end since like 20 years ago when the first book came out, they would be very, very disappointed.
I binged the entire series while on holidays the week before the final season began airing and Dany’s heel turn is far clearer as the ultimately culmination of her arc.It absolutely wasn’t something they just threw in as a last-minute twist but something which had clearly always been intended.
Look, it’s well produced, well acted, but it’s clearly not what we’ve been leading up to for years. The characters start acting like pod people, I will probably re-watch at some point, but I’ll probably stop when the Night King arrives for the showdown, and just view it as an ambiguous ending.
Hooray, opinions!
Dude looks like Mark Lanegan fucked a chihuahua
You forgot the period at the end. This one’s on me!
This is an internet comment, not an article I’m being paid to write. The standards are different
They get paid?
Yeah, people were mean and weird. Like, “oh no! I am so distracted that this person is on this show!” But other famous people were on the show before in other cameos. Sigur Ros, the National, etc. His part was fine and he did a fine job.
I don’t think The National ever made it on. They recorded the Lannister murder song and visited the set, but didn’t film anything. The lead dude was mad! “You’re right. I’m p****d. I’m f***ing p****d, I’m p****d I never got to be in it. I mean, there are were well-known there and we all have beards and s***.”I love “and we all have beards and shit”https://wikiofthrones.com/30625/the-national-frontman-matt-berninger-was-angry-about-not-getting-a-cameo-on-game-of-thrones/
Ah, remember when Ed Sheeran seemed like a significant problem in GoT.
We were so naive then.
Like, no doubt if I was a singer/songwriter/whatever he is and they asked me to be on GoT I would have said yes, absolutely.But as soon as they mentioned they maybe wanted me to sing a little ditty I would have pumped the brakes hard AF. I mean, if you love the show, love the source material, and then willingly let them use you like that, you gotta know what you’re gonna get.He should have said “yes, but only if Arya brutally murders me and I don’t have to sing.”
There was no source material by then
Tonight, on a very special Game Of Thrones…James Taylor!
🎶I’ve seen wildfire, and I’ve seen Rains of Castamere🎶
“Ohhhhh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen blood…”
“I’ve seen rapey shit I thought would never end…”
At the heart of it, I think what most people disliked about Ed Sheeran’s cameo is that people had lists of other famous male singers that they would have preferred to have seen. Obviously, there is more, such as the fact that other famous, more talented musicians have had cameos on the show, but few if any of them had lines, let alone the opportunity to perform. Combine that with the fact that the scene was with Maisie Williams, who has been quite upfront about being a massive Ed Sheeran fan, and it read like “famous young female celebrity uses fame to cast a male celebrity she likes”.
I dont recall any pre hype about his appearance were they openly looking for famous singers to play the part?
I find it so strange how angry and personally offended people were by it. A bit like the Gal Gadot Imagine video thing from last year, people seeing red over something so inconsequential and the out-of-proportion angry response says a lot more about them than it does the thing they’re pissed off about.
“Arya Stark, was not expected to make it to the end of the season,”I know GOT chara’s don’t have a life expectancy, but what the fuck were they building up for then?
So he did something that seemed like it might be fun. Then the edgelords decided to be mad.
I enjoyed his self-satirising performance in Yesterday to be honest.
Yeah well, Ed Sheeran looks like a genetic experiment that should’ve been mercy-killed and started over from scratch.