Interview Roundup: Countdown to S4

As we near the season 4 premiere of Game of Thrones, the interviews are positively flooding in! So here’s your roundup of the highlights from the cast sharing their thoughts on their characters and the fourth season.

• “I understood the way that tragedy can shape an agenda, and how much of a focal point the goal that was born from a particular tragedy can be. How totally driven by one thing he is, and how it also sort of branches itself out into how he lives his life,” Pedro Pascal tells Zap2it in a new interview.  The actors offers his thoughts on his character, a fan favorite arriving in King’s Landing this year. “Here is a character for the first time that kind of comes up against all the most feared people and does not fear them at all. I think that we haven’t seen that.”

• The L.A. Times spoke with Gwendoline Christie about what drew the actress to the role, working with Michelle Fairley and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and how her character has developed since season 2. On the future of Brienne of Tarth, Christie says:

What I will say about Season 4 is that Brienne is journeying on, and we see different aspects of her character flowering, and we see her having to use different parts of herself to survive in different worlds that she has no experience of, and we see her undergoing some of the worst hardship that we have seen. The first three seasons of “Game of Thrones” structurally have taken a very similar path in that it starts as a slow build, and then there’s a climax. And Season 4 takes a very different path, and I think it genuinely is going to blow people’s minds.

• John Bradley stopped by the Wall Street Journal this week to chat with fans about playing one of the nice guys, the women of GoT, and about how the book and the show are becoming their own entities. John fielded questions from a few fans and discussed how he thought Sam might die:

“With Sam, I always think that when you really really think about Game of Thrones, you think of huge spectacular deaths where people get set on fire or people get ran through with swords, I think Sam’s more likely to die of some kind of genetic heart defect or something. Instead of dying in battle, he’s going to die running to battle. So I think Sam won’t die a hero’s death.”

Around 16 minutes into the Wall Street Journal video, John confirms that a book character has been cut. If you’d rather not know, consider yourself warned!

• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is featured in Vanity Fair this month talking about Jaime’s relationships with Brienne and Cersei, and where the knight is headed in season 4.

He always had that, that he was deadly with a sword. But he’s also good with his words and with his mind, to suss out the weaknesses in his opponents. He has always used his mind to play tricks on people and expose their weaknesses. But clearly, now, he doesn’t have the backup of this deadly right hand, because it is no longer. He has to reinvent himself.

• “She’s completely given up on [reuniting with her family], and it almost feels like they’ve given up on her because she’s like, where were they?” Maisie Williams tells Zap2it, and offers more insight in the interview into the older, angrier Arya. “I want people to realize that actually she’s not the same anymore. You can’t root for her forever, because she’s not there to be your favorite character. That’s not what she’s there for. She’s real. People go down bad paths and they make bad decisions, but it’s always justified in their head.”

• George R.R. Martin chats with Vulture about why he no longer knights with cheeseburgers, what moments he best loved seeing realized onscreen, and how much input he has in the process when it comes to the cuts for the show.

• And what can we expect from Arya’s traveling companion, the Hound? According to Rory McCann in this AccessHollywood interview, “My character is on a great road trip with Arya. And it’s going to be crazy this year.” He adds, “There’s going to be a lot of blood spilled, that’s for sure. And I love swearing. […] Apparently I’ve got the record for swear words this year. Yeah!”

• Peter Dinklage, Carice van Houten, Rose Leslie, Pedro Pascal, and more share their favorite shocking moments from the past three seasons of Game of Thrones in this video from Access Hollywood.

• Published on 03/21/2014 at 10:16 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:43 PM CDT