New Season 6 Casting Updates and Speculation: Generals and Maids
By Ani Bundel
While Game of Thrones fans tread water, waiting for the first teaser that will herald the arrival of Winter, we’ve got some casting details for upcoming roles, courtesy of the always-thorough fansite Watchers on the Wall.
Spoilers and speculation ahoy!
You’ve got a hunger
I was just like you when I was younger
Head full of fantasies of knowin’ like a martyr?
Spoiling is easy young man, keeping secrets is harder
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First up, Mark Tankersley, who would be most familiar to fans of the Irish soap opera Fair City, will be on Game of Thrones this year. His agency is currently touting the fact that he spent “two months” filming as “General Bolton” for Season 6. That’s interesting, because we’ve only met two characters surnamed Bolton so far on the show—Roose and his son Ramsey. Is this a distant cousin, or someone with the surname but who wasn’t slated to inherit, even if Ramsey had been left a Snow? One would assume if there is a big battle on the way, Roose would pull in all the reinforcements he could, including pressing distant relations into service, and making them generals by default.
Or the casting agency meant that Tankersley was playing a “Bolton General” rather than “General Bolton,” in which case he could just be some high-ranking lord.
Here comes the General. Rise Up.
(Here’s a picture—he does look like he could be part of the Bolton clan.)
The “two months” shouldn’t fool you into thinking he has a major part though. It sounds impressive, but as we all know, that’s roughly how long it took to film the gigantic battle scene coming in Episode 9 this season. So it’s quite possible that Tankersley will only be seen in that episode.
The other casting tidbit isn’t as detailed, but it is far more interesting, because if the rumors are true, it provides more clues about the “flashbacks” that Bran will be seeing this season.
Annette Tierney has Game of Thrones Season 6 currently listed on her agency CV. She’s playing an “undisclosed character” according to it, but she lists Jeremy Podeswa and Jack Bender as her directors, which means she appears in at least two different episodes. Podeswa is directing the first two episodes of the season while Bender is directing Episodes 5 and 6. Watchers thinks that she may be playing the “housemaid” character that was being advertised earlier this year.
"Housemaid: For this character, HBO wants someone between the ages of 45-65 with a Northern English accent. She runs a large household, and is motherly but stern when she needs to be."
Watchers suspects that the “housemaid” is in fact a younger version of Old Nan that Bran sees in visions. Though the show has not gotten into it, Old Nan is, according to the books, Hodor’s great grandmother, and has been with the staff since “she came to nurse Brandon Stark… whose mother had died birthing him.” That means that she’s been serving the Starks for at least one generation prior to Ned Stark’s generation. Ned did have an older brother Brandon, but their mother did not die birthing him.
If this is indeed a younger version of Old Nan, that means that Bran will be flashing back to Winterfell and his father’s generation twice, once early on and once in the middle of the season. (It’s possible he could flash back to the generation before, but that’s a bit more convoluted, and the TV show is known to streamline things where it can.) According to other casting rumors, the show cast child actor Sebastian Croft as young Ned.
We know that Jack Bender is directing the episode that has the Flashback We’ve All Been Waiting For, the scene at the Tower of Joy. Would it make sense for Bran to flashback to Winterfell just prior to that? Or would he flash back to Winterfell during Robert’s Rebellion (it should be noted Old Nan lost both her sons during that war), just before Ned goes to the Tower of Joy to find Lyanna?
Or Tierney could be playing an entirely different housemaid. Hold on for April.
Finally, actor Chuku Mudu will be playing a Dothraki character named Ahko, according to his Spotlight CV. Mudu was spotted filming with other Dothraki actors before, but now we know his character’s name.