John Bradley on Sam’s hidden motives and playing a George R.R. Martin surrogate

Samwell Tarly is a bit unique, as far as Game of Thrones characters go. He isn’t interested in attaining power, he’s not out looking for blood, and given the choice, he would probably sit most of the main events of the show out in favor of reading a good book. However, for better or worse, he’s in the thick of things. And seeing as he’s made it through all five seasons alive, he’s managed himself pretty well.

Sam may not like confrontation, but that doesn’t mean he won’t act when he has to. Speaking to The Telegraph, actor John Bradley talked about the sly move Sam made last season, when he gave a speech to the Night’s Watchmen to get them to elect Jon Snow Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.

"[O]n the surface it looks like a very impassioned speech where Sam is worried that the Watch is going to be taken over by somebody who is going to corrupt it – but that’s just what Sam wanted it to look like. The subtext, Sam’s internal thought, is that he just wants to get him and Gilly and baby Sam out of Castle Black. It’s nothing to do with the Night’s Watch. He doesn’t care about it anymore. The sooner he can leave it the better. He knows that by talking about the Night’s Watch he can get Jon elected. It was an interesting scene to play – you’re acting but Sam is also acting."

I don’t like the idea of Sam having no loyalty to the Night’s Watch—he did promise Jon he would return to the Wall after he’d been trained as a maester—but it’s good to see Sam being crafty.

I also like that Bradley thinks a lot about subtext. To hear him tell it, a lot of Samwell’s character rests beneath the surface, and the friendly, easy-going guy we’ve come to know may be something of a front. Bradley figures that, after Sam found himself surrounded by strangers at Castle Black, he front-loaded the more palatable aspects of his personality as a survival technique. “I’m not saying that Sam is not all those things, but he is very self-aware and he’s discovered the best aspects of himself and he’s pushed them forward and he uses that to make people like him.”

Sam Tarly, you crafty bastard.

Moving on, Bradley commented on the idea that, of all the characters on the show, Sam is probably the closest thing we have for a stand-in for A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin.

"George, obviously, you get the impression that he’s read a lot of books. And George, crucially, was a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War. When you know that about him you can see that he, like Sam, rejects a lot of those macho ideas, rejects a lot of those extremes and likes to believe solutions can be found academically and peacefully, by peaceful men who want to gain a knowledge of the world and want to apply that for the greater good."

Bradley’s hoping that playing a surrogate for the author will protect the character from being bumped off. We’ll see.

And yes, Bradley was asked about Jon Snow’s death, but he didn’t stray far from the party line. He noted that Jon and Sam had said goodbye plenty of times only to reunite, but the farewell in the Season 5 finale felt different.

"[T]his time felt final, it felt like even if you don’t know what’s going to happen, you felt like this is the end for them. And then the death later on removed any glimmer of hope at all. It’s hard to close that chapter but I knew it was going to be great telly!"

For more of Bradley, including insight into how he mines lines for comedy, head on over to The Telegraph.