Iwan Rheon on the past, present, and future of Ramsay Snow
On a show where many of the characters, even the villainous ones, have layers of nuance that let viewers in on the history and trauma that inspires their actions, Ramsay Snow is something of an outlier. He is passionately, gleefully evil, and no amount of childhood conflict with father Roose Bolton can fully account for it.
In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Iwan Rheon agreed, saying that he figures that Ramsay was little off right from the start. “What’s weird about Ramsay is there is obviously something wrong with him and there always has been. I don’t think you can learn that kind of behaviour,” Rheon said. “If you are not nurtured correctly it can come out of you but I think he was a little s— anyway. The nature-nurture argument, its obviously a bit of both, but nurture could have helped a lot. But it didn’t happen so he’s just a complete monster.”
Rheon does make mention of Ramsay’s “daddy issues,” but you don’t make a habit of hunting women through the woods just because your father didn’t pay attention to you. The guy’s seriously screwed up.
How does Rheon feel about playing such an unapologetic sadist? Predictably, it can be a little off-putting. “Some of the things he does really disturb me,” he said. “I worry about the preparation, it’s not like learning it at home, it’s ‘Oh god, this is horrible.'”
Rheon also had some harsh things to say about method acting, the technique by which actors try to give believable performances by thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings of their characters. “The method is self-indulgent and selfish, cos if you’re working with an actor like that, they’re not going to change anything because of what you are doing, it’s a self-involved performance, no give and take, it’s boring.”
On a show like Game of Thrones, this is a very smart position to take. Can you imagine if the actors playing Ramsay and Cersei and The Mountain actually tried to become their characters? Everyone on the cast would be dead in a week.
Finally, Rheon speculated as to what’s in store for Ramsay, and dropped some interesting comments that may unintentionally spoil things for the coming season. Potential SPOILERS follow.
“He’s gonna get one hell of a horrendous death. Imminent death. I just hope it’s not this year, because I’ve just bought a flat. I need him to keep doing terrible things until I’ve paid for it! Next year, fine. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s weird, because everyone’s anticipating season five, but I feel like that’s done, next! I won’t be doing that for a while. I don’t even know if I’m in it.”
This reminds me of the story from a couple of weeks ago where Peter Dinklage accidentally let slip that Tyrion Lannister would not die during the upcoming season, which many fans took to be a spoiler. Rheon’s comment from above isn’t quite as clear-cut, but it’s along those same lines. Weirdly enough, Rheon is unsure whether he’s even in Season 6, which implies that he’s not sure whether Ramsay meets his end this year. That’s weird. If you filmed a death scene, don’t you think you’d remember it?
Spoiler Alert!
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