Game Of Thrones‘ Conleth Hill thought the writers were mad at him when he read his death scene
The Varys actor is "fine" with it now, but he was "inconsolable" when he first heard how he would die
Aux News Game of Thrones
For the whole run of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, Conleth Hill’s Varys was arguably the secret protagonist—an argument he laid out himself in the first season when he explained to Ned Stark that he didn’t work for any of the various factions in Westeros, he simply worked for “the realm” itself. But when it was time for the show to end, Hill was taken aback by how abrupt and seemingly inconsequential his death ultimately was. For those who don’t recall, Varys died early on in the penultimate episode of the series, getting roasted by a dragon in a scene that is almost entirely in the dark, with all of his careful plotting and scheming essentially amounting to nothing.
Now, many years later, Hill has admitted to The Times UK (via Variety) that he was “inconsolable” when he found out how his character was being killed off, saying he started to feel “frustrated” with the final two seasons because Varys had stopped feeling like the same character. He even said that he thought he must’ve “done something wrong” to suddenly be treated like that by the show, as if the writers or producers were mad at him. But he thinks it just came down to the fact that “the writers wanted to do one thing to end it and the studio HBO wanted to do another,” so the last season “was a bit rushed.” Either way, he’s “fine about it” now.
But even if that’s true now, he definitely wasn’t fine at the time. There’s behind-the-scenes footage of Hill reading his death scene with the cast, and as soon as he says his final line—before the scene is even done—he gets rid of his script and starts rocking in his chair, with Emilia Clarke and Gwendoline Christie looking on sympathetically as Lena Headey grabs his hand. It’s a bummer! Being an actor seems like a bummer!
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That weird, unearned death was definitely one of the low points of that final season and was very emblematic of the whole “let’s clear the table by sweeping everything off onto the floor” approach to resolving the story.
It’s what happens when you don’t have an actual book to adapt and just a list of checkboxes GRRM wants to tick off.
ehh I felt like they had a couple good seasons that went beyond the book content.
6-8 were off book (5 was mostly on book and what’s off book I think GRRM actually has pages for (ymmv)), but 6 had reasonably thorough outlinesI don’t think you could say exactly where the heap of summary becomes grains of bullet points, but it’s somewhere in 7 and you can kinda feel it happen.
Even if they are bullet points (for 6-8), other than the fine points of HOW things play out, are they consistent with what GRRM will do in the books? Are the main points of the show the same as what GRRM intends to happen in the books?
From what was said at the time, yes. It’s all GRRM’s outlines. Now whether he goes back and changes it for the book because of public backlash to the TV show (lmao at him actually finishing the books), remains to be seen. But what happened in the TV show is largely the destination GRRM was going to arrive at.
Thanks.
In specifically regarding who reigns over King’s Landing in the end, numerous people of the show have gone on record saying that’s what GRRM has said his endgame is. And that by itself dictates other certainties.
So I do think if anyone goes into A Dream of Spring expecting a different outcome, they will be sorely disappointed. The biggest change, allegedly, is the progression won’t feel as rushed. Or in the colloquial, “it will be earned”
Much appreciated.
LOL, No one is ever going to read a word of Winds, much less ADOS. Those books will never be published.
“ehh I felt like they had a couple good seasons that went beyond the book content.”
There only WERE “a couple” seasons that went beyond the book content.
“So the Westerosi learned to function as a society, and eventually they were ruled by…oh, let’s say Bran.”
While I’ve been largely agnostic on people’s complaints about the final season and episode (some good points are made, some people whine about stupid shit), the complaints about Bran ending up on the throne make no sense to me. He’s named after Bran the Builder. What does Westeros need after this zombie apocalypse and deadly civil war? REBUILDING. There’s clearly a fight happening in the faiths between the Seven and the hot new Lord of Light. I wonder which will dominate the seat of power…. OH, it’s the old Northern folk faith, which is being overseen by our new prophet king! An awful lot of our past leaders have been idiotic despots, power-drunk madmen, warmongerers, etc. We should probably have a sober, level-headed leader. How about that zen teen with the ability to see through time? You know, the guy who can first-hand experience all the mistakes our past leaders have made and adjust accordingly.Bran is the best choice. By far. I’m open to arguments about a lot of characters’ fates but Bran’s fate and the fate of the “throne” is undeniably great.
As with practically everything that happens in the final season, the issue is the journey, not the destination. Sure, there are scenarios in which it makes for Brand to end up on the throne—as you lay out!—but what we get on the screen is Bran just kind of hanging around doing nothing in particular for…most of the series, actually, and then in the very last episode Tyrion randomly decides he should be king.
Agree with this. The endpoints throughout the last season aren’t wrong – they just aren’t earned. Mad Queen Dany is a perfectly reasonable ending for the story, in fact possibly a great ending. It just wasn’t earned and wasn’t set up. Arya is a perfectly reasonable character to kill the Night King. It just came out of nowhere and not in a good way because her character had nothing to do with the White Walkers for the entire series. It wasn’t set up.A good Arya/Night King article, for that matter: https://collider.com/game-of-thrones-arya-killing-night-king/
Yeah, exactly. All the points made sense but none of them were really developed or told plausibly. Even Bran becoming king, Tyrion has some bullshit line about stories and how Bran has the best one. That’s highly debatable, but it’s also not a good reason. You know what is a good reason? Having all the goddamn knowledge of human history to draw from because of his powers.
He’s named after Bran the Builder. What does Westeros need after this zombie apocalypse and deadly civil war? REBUILDING.Historically, what you need and what you get are two different things. Also, just because people put a name on a thing doesn’t mean it is the thing. Just one of many cases in point, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea is not democratic, not for the people and really stretching the definition of something by the people (it is but just not very many of them).
They chose the perfect character to give everyone the shits.
Ironically, Weiss & Benioff turned in a rushed, crappy ending because they wanted to get on to new stuff (Star Wars et al), and didn’t care if they destroyed the show that made them (Benioff was already someone pre-GOT, though not nearly at the level the show brought him to, while Weiss was a nobody). But oops, the ending was so rushed and crappy and so totally destroyed the show that it turned everyone against them and cost them all those jobs they were rushing out the door to do.I guess there’s a lesson in there, maybe?
Varys was right to want to stop Dany from taking power, but the last 2 seasons were a jumbled mess in execution.
saying he started to feel “frustrated” with the final two seasons because Varys had stopped feeling like the same character.
It’s because the showrunners basically excised the big secret plan of his character, and didn’t really give him much other than “sort of help Daenerys, get disillusioned, try to kill her” to replace it. Varys’ book arc is that he’s a kind of Extreme Utilitarian who has more or less tried to engineer a Model Targaryen Prince and destabilize Westeros to prepare the way, and while we won’t know for sure until/if Winds of Winter comes out, it’s probably all going to blow up in his face (both literally and metaphorically).
Yup! He ended up feeling kinda pointless at the end of the show because they opted not to include the thing that was his point. It’s so frustrating that we got an adaptation that was in so many ways near perfect, but is brought down to like a C grade because they were cheap at the start and rushed at the end.
Yeah, it’s not even like they ran out of book material and had to start vamping—they ditched Varys’s backstory before they even got to that point!Which is especially frustrating because the show had the opportunity to improve on Varys’s storyline in the book, which by A Dance with Dragons had gotten super bogged down with like a thousand unnecessary characters running up and down the known world. They could’ve streamlined the whole thing by, say, making Trystane Martell the fake Aegon, or something else that at least made use of the existing characters and historical backstory instead of cutting everything to the bone.
Do you think GRRM is annoyed with Benioff and Weiss for exposing how many of his big plot developments are red herrings? Ah, Young Griff, we hardly knew ye.
I actually think that the last couple seasons ending up as they did suggests that many of those important cut storylines are in fact not red herrings and did provide some necessary function for the narrative.
I think that the last couple books not materialising suggests that Martin introduced those storylines with no clue about what necessary narrative function they would provide, has struggled to come up with anything, and perhaps now feels more pressure to justify their existence as not-red-herrings in order to “prove” the show wrong for cutting them.
Eh, depends on which threads you’re talking about I guess. I don’t really see Daenerys’ unraveling making much sense without the existence of JonCon and Faegon, for instance.
I think she unravels the second anyone doesn’t bend the knee, which doesn’t require there to be another Targaryen in the game — any candidate for the throne with a decent amount of Westerosi support would be enough. Aside from the catharsis of killing some slavers, she’s never presented as a particularly just ruler, she just seems like one in comparison to the other players.Two books of POV chapters showing her gradually diminishing mental state would do the job just fine.
If that were true she would’ve unraveled a long time ago, plenty of people have refused her rule since she came to power. Even if it were true though, who would the other candidate for the throne be? I don’t see Jon’s story intersecting with King’s Landing any time soon, assuming he’s even interested in taking the crown after becoming a sentient corpse. Cersei would be ousted by the people even without the encouragement of The Faith and Faegon’s puppeteers.What would push all the wrong buttons with Daenerys more than arriving in Westeros, only to find her whole messianic quest has already been fulfilled by some petulant Targaryen-wannabe who still has the love of the people because he’s bankrolled by the very PR team who tried to have her killed? It just clicks together with so much more force and cohesion than what ended up happening in the show.
He might’ve thought someone was angry with him. Maybe.
Game Of Thrones’ Conleth Hill thought the writers were mad at him when he read his death sceneFunny, I thought they were mad at the audience.
They were certainly mad at Ser Barristan Selmy.
They were mad at anyone who was invested in the story. Actors, fans all got treated with equal contempt and hostility.
Lol!! That’s what happens when they have to conclude a 7000 page story (2500 yet to be written) in 10 episodes without any source material. I predict that if George RR Martin ever writes the ending to his literary opus, it will bear no resemblance to what appeared on HBO.
I was also bummed with how they handled Littlefinger. I really wanted to see the most conniving, sneaky rat in the Seven Kingdoms, somehow find a way to sit on the Iron Throne (and then get served justice).
I do hope that he finds his book ending at the hands of Lady Stoneheart. But I was perfectly okay with his TV death. Creep on Sansa and see what you get, Mr. Mayor.
To me, his death would have been much more satisfying if the buildup to it didn’t feel so contrived. I feel like they should have disposed with him much sooner, and in a more believable way (my biggest issue being that while I understand that the nobility were looking for any excuse to be rid of him, everyone accepting Psychic Bran point blank seemed a bit silly). It did make me think of the scene in “I, Claudius”, in which Sejanus is lured to the Senate house thinking he’s going to gain even more power, only to have his treachery suddenly exposed. It’s a great scene, and I think the buildup to that reveal was much better than Littlefinger’s. Overall, I feel like the show dropped the ball with his character. His cunning plans in the book were a lot more entertaining and believable. At least the show didn’t keep the annoying Robert Arryn hanging around for too long.
One problem with the buildup is that it relied too much on tricking the audience— presenting us with scenes of Sansa and Arya acting weird around one another like they’re each preparing for the other’s betrayal, when they knew all along what was going on. It’s fine if the audience is tricked because the characters are tricked; it’s not fine if the characters are acting suspicious in a way that’s only for the audience’s benefit.
I don’t know, regardless of the manner and quality of his death, it’s not like killing people almost at random was a new look for the series. Better to stick with Hanlon’s Razor, I think.
I think the showrunners biggest mistake was not revealing to the actors from the start what their characters would be about because they were afraid of spoilers. I bet Emilia would have acted many scenes quite differently if she had known she would become evil in Season 8. Throughout much of season 8, at which point she knew the fate of the character, we see her expertly convey the humorless iciness of a person on a singular mission whose mind is slowly unraveling as this mission begins to falter.
As for Conleth, instead of a more or less amoral schemer he is in the books, the showrunners made Varys to be the conscience of the realm and in my opinion elevated his role. His death may on it’s face not seem like much, but in combination with what Dany becomes it becomes immensely poignant.
‘Now Varys’s ashes can tell my ashes, ‘See I told you so.’’
GRRM actually told Hill that his character is “Basically a good person”. Additionally, when asked who the most misunderstood characters in his series are, GRRM said Melisandre & Varys. Melisandre gets a POV chapter in ADWD that shows that she really is a true-believer who thinks she’s saving the world against the Great Other (even if she deceives others about how confident she is in her prophetic visions). Varys doesn’t get that, but gets a big monologue in the last chapter of the book where he explains what he’s doing and why. Unfortunately, a decade plus has resulted in many fans being unsatisfied with that and concluded that he’s lying to Kevan and he’s really all about blood ties to a family the text never specifies him having.
What I find kind of funny about Martin’s answer is that no, I understand Melisandre quite well. She’s a religious zealot. And religious zealots can get fucked.
I mean so was Thoros after he resurrected beric and everyone loves him. Maybe try and see the nuance in the story that GRRM is trying to convey with Melisandre
I see it. I just don’t care. I don’t personally have beef with the character, I just also don’t sympathize with the “plight” or think she’s “misunderstood”.
Not disagreeing, but there are two responses that come to mind: (1) the TV show didn’t really lean in on her zealotry; she was portrayed as more motivated by loyalty than ideology (was GRRM talking about readers’ or viewers’ misunderstanding?), and (2) about a third of the US population has no understanding that religious zealots should get fucked.
I disagree, Clarke was always ready to bring the menace when it was actually asked of her. I just think she was also asked to bring a considerable amount of warmth of humanity.
Disagree re: Clarke. The whole *point* is that Dany doesn’t actually SEE how much she’s slipping into the Targaryen madness. I think it was smarter to keep Clarke in the dark on that so it didn’t color her performance. Dany never thinks that what she’s doing is “wrong”. She never sees herself as the villain. I’ll agree with anyone who says that the last season was rushed but Dany’s turn towards darkness was inherent to the character.
On this we absolutely agree. The issue wasn’t the plot point, it was how the story got there.
Absolutely. It was obvious from midway throught the first book/season that the whole point of GoT is that power corrupts. The dragons are the least subtle metaphor for that in the history of literature. And still there are people who didn’t get why Dany would have a heel turn despite it being the premise of the story, foreshadowed many times in the back history, and her being the only person in the whole world with the central metaphor dragons!
Yeah, Dany is not meant to have any self-awareness of her slide into darkness. It doesn’t mean the showrunners couldn’t have told Clarke about it. Surprising the cast has its place (hat tip to Alien) but by and large I reckon it’s better the actor know where the character is headed so they can make their early performances consistent with the character’s endpoint. This of course does not apply to shows that have no idea where they’re going (hat tip to Heroes).
Even the cast of Alien knew what was coming, they just didn’t realise it would play out quite as intensely.
My understanding is that for chestburster scene, John Hurt was the only actor aware of what was going to happen.
‘Dany never thinks that what she’s doing is “wrong”. She never sees herself as the villain. ‘
That is a fair point. However, on the other hand, D&D had to keep stifling Emilia because she kept wanting to add warmth to her character. This made for some pretty wooden acting in the earlier seasons, leading many to conclude that Emilia was a bad actress and a poor choice for portraying Dany. (Hard to believe, but there was a time when Kit and Emilia were the least like actors on the show by the audience.)
Well… Maybe she was a poor choice. I like Clarke and have seen her in other things where she was perfectly fine. The stiffness of her early seasons felt natural to me because of her brother and then Drogo and then coming into power. But if she felt held back because she wanted to “add warmth”, maybe she didn’t understand the character. Maybe she felt too much kinship and thus didn’t want to lean into the darker aspects of Dany because she didn’t want to be dark herself as Emilia. It’s not uncommon for writers and actors to become enamored of a character to the point that they defy the intent of the character. Nobody in real life wants to be “the bad guy”. I suspect that was a large element at play in Clarke’s objections to Dany’s turn in the last season. The depth to which she goes was abrupt, the violence of it was abrupt. But that was the character direction for a very long time and *I* suspect that Clarke didn’t absorb the clues as much as she could because she didn’t *want* to absorb them. And the same goes for dummy fans who named their pets or their kids after her.
Emilia didn’t need to be told she would become ‘evil’ you know it by book 2 and have it demonstrated in book 3: Daeneyrs is in way over her head, knows far less than she thinks she does, and is doomed by her own ignorance and hubris.
Shows how much I had checked out by the final season that I had no recollection of when, where, why, or how Varys died.
Ditto.And not just him, there are a whole bunch of key characters who I can’t remember if they lived or died. And if they died, how.
Perhaps news of Hill’s hurt feelings will spur GRRM to finish Winds of Winter and the rest of the series
The video of the table read of his death scene was weirdly joyless, perhaps because everyone knew what was coming.
You would think that table reads on a spectacularly successful show would be a happy affair, even with the inevitable character deaths, especially on a swords-and-sorcerers genre show.
Instead, it looked as grim and serious as a capital-murder courtroom.
Maybe as simple as bitter workplace politics on camera.
I mean if it was season 2 or 3 it probably would be a lot happier
I’m assuming he’s the one in the middle in the header image, but that’s just a guess. I thought it was standard in the industry to actually point this out in the caption. “Conleth Hill (center) with some Game Of Thrones co-stars in 2015.”
It’s not, in fact. He’s on the right. The guy in the middle knew you’d assume it was him, that’s why he’s pointing to the correct person.
“Helpful Alfie Allen” could be a meme.
I just Googled him to make sure you weren’t joking. Seriously, when did they stop doing the standard practice of labelling the people in images like this?