Uh-oh! Matthew Macfadyen is doing a show with the Game Of Thrones guys
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have approximately one show—Netflix's upcoming 3 Body Problem—to earn back the public's trust
Aux News MacFadyen
Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen is a very good actor who was lucky enough to star in a very good show created by very good writers, and now gets to treat Hollywood like his own personal buffet of potential roles now that it’s all said and done. Other very good actors haven’t been quite so fortunate, like, say, the cast of Game Of Thrones, who have largely failed to rise to the level of prestige that one might have expected of them before the show went off the rails. (Emilia Clarke starred in a Christmas movie no one watched! Kit Harrington is still peddling his Jon Snow spinoff!)
In light of all of that, we have one burning question for Matthew Macfadyen: why the hell are you doing a show with those guys? Did you “kind of forget” that they suck? Maybe playing Logan Roy’s dutiful lapdog for so many seasons inured the actor to the perils of what could be a difficult workplace, but we still just have to say: protect yourself, Matthew! Be careful!
Macfadyen will trade the halls of Waystar Royco for the hall of the White House in the new series from David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Bernie Caulfield, titled Death By Lightning. Based on Candice Millard’s novel Destiny Of The Republic, the project is a dramatic retelling of the “epic and stranger-than-fiction true story” of President James Garfield and his eventual assassination by one-time admirer Charles Guiteau. Macfadyen will play Guiteau while Michael Shannon has signed on to play Garfield (via The Hollywood Reporter).
Benioff and Weiss’ last few attempts to clear their name didn’t go very well. Not only were they exiled from a planned Star Wars trilogy in 2019, but they also attempted a speculative series about slavery in the modern era that was, thankfully, axed by HBO right about when people were starting to wonder why it hadn’t immediately been axed by HBO. The pair does have one major chance to win back some iota of public opinion with their upcoming sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem, which premieres March 21 on Netflix. Jury’s still out on that, but in the meantime, man, that finale still hurts.
10 Comments
Call me nuts but maybe people want to work with them because of all the stuff that came before the crappy final season or two of GoT.
Yep. And quality isn’t really gonna be most people’s top metric anyway – actors and crew will probably care more about what they’re like to work with, and execs’ll be focused on some byzantine notion of business sense.
I feel like George R.R. Martin doesn’t get enough blame for the ending of the show. Like dealing with someone with that level of writers block must be frustrating. I would have wrapped up the show and moved on too.
Jesus all the whining and bitching about the end of Game of Thrones is fucking pathetic.
And yet, here you are.
Here I am!
so are you!
Context reminder that 99% of the GoT audience doesn’t know or care who Weiss and Benioff are; it’s only us extremely-online pop-culture obsessives who do.
The pair does have one major chance to win back some iota of public opinion with their upcoming sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem, which premieres March 21 on Netflix. Jury’s still out on thatIs it, though? The writer of this article certainly seems to have already returned a verdict.
Anyone besides me want to see a (mini-?)series with Macfadyen showing us what happened to his Spooks (aka MI-5 in the U.S.) character after he left MI-5?