Ian Beattie (Meryn Trant) talks being crossed off Arya’s list
His was the first name to make it onto Arya’s death list, having earned his spot by killing her Water Dancing instructor, Syrio Forel. Ser Meryn Trant was not a popular character during his stint on Game of Thrones. He was not a friendly guy and had no fun or memorable lines that would endear him to fans. He did Joffrey’s bidding, which did not help his popularity, and in the end, he was proven to be a sadistic pedophile. So, it was extremely satisfying to see him get his comeuppance at the hands of Arya Stark.
In a show that has been infamous for not giving the good guys the revenge that fans crave, Trant’s death came as agift…at least it did for me. Ian Beattie, the actor who portrayed Ser Meryn, spoke to Vulture about his death, and how he found out it was his time to go. Beattie says he had a feeling he would be getting the chop after reading that his character was being shipped off with Mace Tyrell to Braavos, because he knew who was there.
I did have a strange feeling of impending doom. But David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], they’re not without a touch of style. They phoned me personally to tell me the news, “Valar morghulis, or in this case, Meryn morghulis.” They said, “We’re sending you the scripts of episodes nine and ten, and you get to see a really nasty side of Ser Meryn.”
And what a nasty side it was. As mentioned, Ser Meryn had a taste for young girls, and as we saw in the fifth season finale, also liked to beat them with sticks.
So I got the scripts, and I was genuinely horrified. I was daunted by the challenge of bringing this monster to life, to make this monster human, which I believed would make it more terrifying. There wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t thinking about the one scene in episode nine or the scene in episode ten.
I can only imagine the physical and physiological toll that playing such a horrible and irredeemable monster takes on an actor.
Those three days were probably also the biggest challenge of my acting career. I think and I hope we got it right, that it presents the viewer with the horror of Ser Meryn and the thoroughly just end that he deserves. But it was also the worst moment of my professional career.
Beattie goes on to explain how, for the last six hours of filming, he had prosthetics over his eyes, which was a good thing, because no one could see him cry. He also talks about how much of a pleasure it was to work with Maisie Williams, and how they only stunt performers once, when Arya jumped on Meryn and thrust a dagger into his eyes. Also, the actor put to rest a popular theory regarding the survival of Syrio Forel.
Yeah. Speaking as the character, Syrio Forel is dead. Unless Syrio managed to somehow overcome Ser Meryn at that moment, with a wooden half of a sword, which I would have thought to be extremely unlikely, Ser Meryn simply would not have left him alive.
He even mentions that David Benioff and Dan Weiss told him that Syrio was dead, and that the only way the Water Dancer instructor could live on would be in the guise of Jaqen H’ghar, which he did not think was likely at all. So there you have it, theorists, straight from the horse’s mouth. Syrio is dead…and so too is his killer.
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