Ilyn Payne cast

This guy looks the part so well, it’s spooky… *does the dance of awesomeness*

He looks great for the part. I disagree on you about the amount of acting required for the part, though. I think the inability to speak requires a lot more acting skill, since he’ll need to rely solely on expression to pull it off. Still, HBO has done things right so far, so I have faith that his talent will live up to his looks.

Wow, that guy is some serious nightmare fuel right there.

Excellent job HBO and Nina!

A musician is gonna play a man without a tongue. How fucking ironic is that? :D

Some facial expressions here

Mission accomplished HBO. That dude terrifies me.

So now you’ve got a direct line to HBO – great!

Johnson seems like a boffo pick – perhaps he and Bronn can jam together for the DVD extras. I also find it hilarious – and rather unnerving – that he appears to wear the exact same expression in almost every photograph. Even those taken when he still had hair.

I think his age is fitting the role.

It’s Erikson btw., not Erickson. Funny that he’ll have a cameo :D

Winter Is Coming,

I think Erikson is written without a “c”.

Lex,

Jeez! You just scared me with that photo!

A-freaking-mazing. Payne is perfect.

So how do you think this piece of casting happened? Considering he has no acting experience, I’m guessing someone in the casting department is a fan of his music, and realized “You know who would make a perfect Ilyn Payne…?”

That’s so cool, if that’s how it happened.

He looks utterly perfect. Add some longish stringy hair and a big sword and he’s ready to go…As for him being too old, I’m sure it would not be hard to cast a stunt double for him in the training scenes with Jaime, esp. if they are armored. A few closeups during their exchanges would do fine…

Now the real question is, can he do a good clacking sound?

COL (clacking out loud). :D

Nymeria,

hahaha, perfect! What a glare, nice find by HBO for sure.

Lex,

Something tells me he will be able to perfect an epic clack!

Good to hear Bronson Webb is staying on board. No word on whether Illyrio/Ian McNiece was the rumored recast or that he’s still on board?

The last bit of “big” casting left now is Walder Frey and I’ve wanted to know about that one as much as I did about Tywin’s casting.

As a fan of Dr. Feelgood, this is beyond weird (but cool):

A little Dr. Feegood here, featuring guitar by Ilyn Payne:

Straphe: A musician is gonna play a man without a tongue. How fucking ironic is that?     

Just cuz he can’t speak doesn’t mean he doesn’t have ears!

dizzy_34,

Do not think so.
She is probably one of the brothel employees.

The Rabbit,

Ah, I don’t know Sasha Grey is heavily featured on Entourage this season (playing herself). However just because she’s an adult film star doesn’t mean she’s automatically going to be a random prostitute.

dizzy_34: The Rabbit,
Ah, I don’t know Sasha Grey is heavily featured on Entourage this season (playing herself).However just because she’s an adult film star doesn’t mean she’s automatically going to be a random prostitute.    

I agree that unless we have specific evidence, there is no reason to assume that any porn actresses are necessarily playing prostitutes.

I’m glad they’re giving shots to porn actresses. It’s pretty sick some of the discrimination against them.

I’ll tell you what’s terrifying is the size of that dude’s HEAD in the “he’s tall” pic. WOW!

HBO’s casting a lot of porn actresses lately. Sasha Grey on Entourage, Sibel Kekilli as Shae (okay former porn actress) and maybe now this Sahara Knite girl. Interesting.

Brude: HBO’s casting a lot of porn actresses lately.Sasha Grey on Entourage, Sibel Kekilli as Shae (okay former porn actress) and maybe now this Sahara Knite girl.Interesting.    

i guess they’ve got a “leg up” when it comes to the casting couch … or an “ass up”?

gotta love a “nerd” show filling the cast with porn actresses. i say the more the merrier.

i would think she would be part of the Dany sequence given her look. did they already cast all of the handmaidens? did they cast the handmaiden that teaches Dany the … ahem …. lustful arts?

Hahahaha loving the porn star castings. Talk about DVD extras.

Camarlengo: A funny pic of Sahara in action here.    

Hahahaha… that is SO wrong.

I just can not resist :D

You guys and your dirty thoughts :))))
I even do not know names of any porn star.

Well, at least, I can agree on Jhiqui possibility here.

It makes you wonder if Sahara Knite might have read for the role of Shae?
And Wilko Ilyn Johnson Payne is perfect casting!

Clack! Clack! Mr. Johnson has certainly perfected the scary deadpan look–can hardly wait to see him in full effect. I enjoyed the array of photos of him glowering through the ages, bowl haircut and all, and the clip of him being coaxed to smile.

Nymeria: Haha!Look at those eyes on the “tall” picture!No wonder Sansa is so scared!Good initiative WIC! You should add the part about Bronson Webb too.    

Exactly this.

He looks scary, but also like you don’t know what might be going on in his head. Which I think suits the character, as sometimes I think Ilyn could end up being one of the good guys.

Indeed. HBO could offer some very…informative…extras featuring Sahara Knite on the DVD release. Or, even better, the Blu-ray release. Yes. I would enjoy that.

Camarlengo: A funny pic of Sahara in action here.    

If I had been drinking coffee when I clicked that link, I’d have a keyboard on my hands.

LOL @ “Ms. Knite.”

If you had seen some of the material I saw, you might not be so formal or polite.

nsk,

Ewww….. didn’t think of it that way…..

Personally I’d like to see porn integrated into mainstream productions. Sucks that you can watch a good movie with fake sex, or a bad movie with real sex, but not a good movie with real sex.

shadallion: LOL @ “Ms. Knite.”If you had seen some of the material I saw, you might not be so formal or polite.    

Well, I kind of feel bad for her if she think this might be her big break like Sasha Grey, and all she hears is “porn actress”. It’s like people are saying that is all you are, and all you’ll ever be, and people are just going to rub it in her face that she can never be just “actress”. For Ms. Knite, we don’t know anything about the role and how difficult it may be, and whether it includes a portrayal of sex or just nudity. On the HBO side of things, if all they hear is how they cast a porn actress for some totally gratuitous sex scenes, will they come to regret casting her? Will religious types boycott? If on the other hand there is some substance to the role, then I don’t think it is fair to simply call her “porn actress”. (Maybe HBO need a new slogan: It’s not porn, it’s HBO).

Well, Rome featured a lot of sex scenes and still it was excellent show.
They were just true to the source. I expect same from GoT.

And don’t compare Sasha Grey to the porn actresses from GoT.
Grey in Entourage is technically a Whalberg’s initiative to say to us “Sasha Grey was porn actress and she is very smart and well educated, don’t judge her” because he wants do it a show about porn business.

Besides, read the imdb page of Sibel Kekilli. Everyone says there that she is very good actress.

spacechampion: On the HBO side of things, if all they hear is how they cast a porn actress for some totally gratuitous sex scenes, will they come to regret casting her? Will religious types boycott?

Might not be just religious types – lots of people don’t like gratuitous sex scenes including myself, though I of course will still watch the show cos I’m invested in the series, other people who aren’t may just dismiss the series as yet another exercise in graphic sex and violence. If HBO want mainstream acceptance they better not go too far OTT.

Hear Me Roar,

Exactly – I mean there aren’t THAT many graphic sex scenes in the books and when there are it’s for a purpose – like the rapes etc. Or the Twincest. If they stick to the books it should be ok. I’m just not into visual porn at all!

Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to go overboard, though I think even if they simply recreate all the sex in the books (which they absolutely should) some people are still going to be offended.

It’s a tough line to have to walk. I have faith though. HBO won’t sanitize the material, but nor will they make it “excessive.” That’s a word where the level will vary wildly based upon who you ask, but HBO knows their audience after so many successful programs. We’re sophisticated adults, can handle some nudity-with-purpose.

My big hope is that HBO do not add more sex scenes than there are in the books in an attempt to drum up publicity. TRUE BLOOD and ROME both suffered from having pointless sex scenes added which didn’t flesh out the plot (although some do, like the hilarious one in ROME where Cleopatra is trying to get pregnant) and seemed there for their own sake, and this backfired in ROME when they turned off the UK audience (the BBC edited the first three episodes into two, concentrating about half the sex scenes in the entire series into a very short time frame giving completely the wrong impression of the show).

Something like THE WIRE handled it much better, using sex scenes when necessary to illustrate a point (like Jimmy McNulty’s absolutely epic night of drunken self-destruction in Season 2 where he smashes up his own car, takes shelter in a cafe and ends up with the teenage waitress) but then otherwise holding back on it.

I somewhat agree and somewhat not.
I dont agree with the earlier statements concerning Rome. I dont think the sex went overboard there. I cant think of one occasion where the show had too much sex.
True blood though that is another matter. In season one there was lots of sex but it was all in the story. I didnt mind. The sex was authentic and real.
It seemed as if HBO got a positive response on the sex and went “Hey, this is what people wants!”
Now there is sex for no other purpose than sex.

I dont mind, Im no prude but I think it takes from the story just as too much of anything would.
To show violence just for the sake of showing violence or showing sex just for the sake of the sex is never good for any story and it shows so clearly.

When it comes naturaly it just does, when it dont its just like the plumber ringing the doorbell asking “do you have a problem miss?” It is very obvious to everyone but the horny teenagers.

I hope for much violence in the show. I hope for lots of sex and nudity. I hope for a very explicit language. I hope for blood and gore and hate and tragedy and lots of “fuck” in all its forms.

BUT it have to be authentic and it have to follow the story. There have to be a point to it all.

I dont think the show will turn into another True Blood. HBO already have a True Blood. I trust in the producers.

But I still hope the show will wreck havok with all groups of conservative christians and religious fundamentalists in general because they all deserve it and i hope they all get it both deep and hard.

Today I went shopping at the supermarket by my house. Just outside by the prkinglot an old man, an alcoholic by the look of it had fallen in some stairs and was lying bleeding from the head.
People just went right past him. Hardly glanced at him.
Im proud to say I saw to that he was taken to a hospital.

Now what has this to do with anything you ask?

Well that is the society we live in today and I must say I would much rather live in a society where our problem was too much sex.

The Dothraki have sex publicly in front of everyone and to show this there will surely be lots of sex and nudity in the backround as stated.
I envy them this. I would love to see two of my neighbours fucking by the carrots in the supermarket. It would open up for all new kinds of dialogue, wouldnt it?

I think it is far more weird and far more wrong when people just walk past an old man lying bleeding on the ground.
We are far more cruel in reality than GRRM could ever begin to describe in his books.

I once read an interview with Amanda Donohoe (years and years ago) where she noted something along the lines of:

On prime-time television in the United States, you can show a man killing his wife but you can’t show him making love to her.

This pretty much still holds true today.

I thought Rome went downhill later on because they stopped showing so much sex. I expect to see the sex, and I honestly find the lack of it distracting. I actually find it “gratuitous” to leave sex scenes out, if anyone can understand that.

On the other hand, I’d be happy if they kept the graphic violence to a minimum. I guess it’s weird that I enjoy watching fucking (and think it improves almost any show), but I don’t enjoy watching people get hacked apart.

HBO is not the Spice channel, I think we can all relax a little bit. It’s Game of Thrones there’ll be plenty of Sex and Violence for everyone. :)

Phoenix_torn,

and clearly I messed up the spoiler tags…

I think human sexuality can be beautiful (sacred even) and we almost never get to see that on HBO or anywhere else for that matter. It’s a lot easier to do the salacious stuff. I think Jon and Ygritte come the closest and I loved those scenes in the book. As for violence I think we don’t complain about that so much because it is not as real to us. Most of us have not experienced extreme violence personally even though we know it exists.

Steve Westenra,

I’ve read most of the Sookie Stackhouse books and there is nowhere near as much sex in them. They talk about sex a lot, but you don’t actually see much of it.

I love True Blood, but you’re right. It just gets boring. They have to do outragous things to keep us interested becuase the sex no longer furthers the plot. Bill/Sookie have make-up/I thought you were dead sex then we go on with the show.

With GoT we know the pilot itself has a lot of sex. They inserted the Tyrion scene, included the Dany/Drogo, and end with “the things I do for love”

silverjaime: Steve WestenraI think I might be watching this show on my own and not with my (late teen) sons!    

You better do that.

About violence and sex. Well, I can watch some violence thing it won’t feel awkward, but sex scene? It’s feel weird and uncomfortable.

True Blood has unnecessary sex, no doubt about that, but I think Rome was just true to the how Romans were living that times. I didn’t mind it, in my opinion it was justified unlike TB.

I dont know if sex really contribute to character development. Sure me having sex contributes to MY character development but in a motion picture or tv-show a sex scene can at its best express the situation and the enviroment without using any words.
We all know the different kinds of sex there are and they all express something. A repe scene express the brutality of the world just as the different characters reaction to said act gives us hints of their inner workings.
A intimate lovescene can be sweet and tender or a bit akward. I bet Jon and Ygritte will have a bit of both.
Sex can be cold to show someones lack of heart.
I think the most complex scenes will be with Tyrion and Shae. Somewhat superficial sex that still somehow must show Tyrions growing love.
Also Dany and Drogo which begins rather brutal and then develops by Dany starting to enjoy it and then takes control.
I guess in these two cases there is a bit of character development.
Come to think of it….to show this development there will have to be lots and lots of sex.

Crotalidian: Phoenix_torn,
Hang on Dany/Drogo in pilot? and Tyrion dont they both happen at least halfway through the book? Are they cutting some of the early viserys/daenerys scenes out?    

I definitely hope that they don’t cut on the early Viserys/Daenerys scenes – those are crucial for Dani’s character development! But I think we shouldn’t worry too much in that respect, surely GRRM would never allow it! ;-)

JJtheCrow,

Why? Hmm, I think its called wishful thinking. :-)

I think I would let a 12-year old watch the show because of the violence, not the sex.
I dont think there is any dager with sex as long as it isnt pornographic.
I remembered as a kid watching TV with my parents I was so embarrased every time there was any kind of sex.
Its just embarrasing, not harmful. Its a peek into the adult world which at that point seems so weird.
Violence is something else. It numbs the mind. Me I love graphic violence on the screen but there is nothing as chilling as hearing a six year old laugh about someones head getting blown off. I really wonder how the kids of today will turn out as adults.

As to reading the books I would say the earlier the better. I have never seen the point with litterature for kids. By kids Im talking early teens.
It is as bad as music for kids. As if they need things that are shallow and watered down in an age where is it more important than ever to be challanged and to grow and mature.