Kristian Nairn and Natalia Tena talk Game of Thrones auditions, costumes, prosthetics, and more at C2E2

Kristian Nairn and Natalia Tena traveled to Chicago this past weekend for C2E2, the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo. The pair signed autographs for fans and also participated in a Game of Thrones panel to share some behind the scenes stories from the set, and answer fan questions about the series.

Newsarama has provided an almost complete transcript of the panel, here are some highlights:

Tell us a little about the audition process for Thrones.

Nairn: I had done an audition about 5 years previous for the movie Hot Fuzz with Simon Pegg. Very strangely, the part I auditioned for was played by Rory McCann. It was the same casting director from Game of Thrones and I got a call. I was invited to a 40th birthday party and they had me carry a small child on my back. I had to carry him around a garden while these ladies all watched and it was really f***ing bizarre. I didn’t understand it and was like, well this is shit. Then I told my mother I was up for this thing called Game of Thrones, and my mother was a HUGE fan of the books. She nearly fell off her chair, saying “take the part, Kristian, take the part!”

Tena: The book, I had never heard of it, or George R.R. Martin, who’s amazing. When I went into audition, they didn’t give me the entire script, they just gave me a few lines. It was one scene from the first season with me and a little boy and I was like, what is this? I’ve got a band called Molotov Jukebox, and when we were touring, we were doing these festivals. There was this little old man selling shit that you buy in festivals and bought this mad ivy and flower headpiece. I wore this weird brown dress that sort of looks like a bag, and I had some handcuffs, obviously. I went to this audition fully dressed up. It could have gone either way, they could have thought I was mad, but I think they liked it.

Tell us about the costumes you wear…

Tena: Well, mine’s not special, it’s basically a bag with like bits of dead animal on it. That’s about it! In a way it means you don’t have to worry about looking pretty ever. I just walk in looking rough, with a gross smile on my face and I wear a bag. It’s great. I enjoy it a lot.

Nairn: My costume has been the same costume since day one, and they do what’s called a break-down where they get all the mud and shit and they get the cobwebs off so it’s never properly laundered. You can smell my costume from about a mile away. It smells like a barnyard. It’s awful.

An audience member recorded some of the fan question portion of the panel. Kristian and Natalia talk about their child co-stars growing up before their eyes, answer who they’d like to see on the Iron Throne, share their reactions to the Red Wedding, and describe how they deal with the hardships on set caused by the weather.

IGN also has some coverage from the panel, with one of the highlight being the ever popular subject of Kristian Nairn’s prosthetic. When asked by an audience member if he every worried about “shrinkage problems” he assured them that there was no need, as it was 15 inches, and prosthetic. He went on to describe the process, and got a few laughs from the crowd:

“One of the first times you saw it, you grabbed it,” he said to Tena. “Yeah, I was inside there.” That drew a huge laugh from the crowd. He went on to state, “The first time I ever met my prosthetic it was on Richard Madden, and he was running around the car park with it strapped to him.”

“Also, there were two versions. There was one that was my kind of gray hair and another with really tight, sort of Afro, black pubes. I was like, ‘That’s not for me!'” After being prompted, Nairn described the prop in detail. “It’s like this horrible thong and the public hair had to be glued into my own, by a very lucky makeup girl. For weeks, I had bits of false minge stuck on me.”

The day of shooting, there were pheasants mating in a nearby bush and they had to keep resetting the scene. “So, not a good day,” Nairn concluded.

Kristian Nairn also spoke with ReelFilmNews while at the expo. He talks about his first time at C2E2 and in Chicago, he reveals that we’ll see Bran develop and use his power’s more in Season 4, and he explains the three stages of carrying Isaac.

• Published on 04/30/2014 at 3:18 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:42 PM CDT