Jonathan Pryce Compares High Sparrow to Pope Francis
By Ani Bundel
Jonathan Pryce is currently taking on all sorts of religions in his on screen work. At the moment, he’s most known currently for his role on Game of Thrones as the High Sparrow, the religious leader of a fanatical faction of the Faith of the Seven in Westeros, but he’s also playing the part of a Jewish baker in a new independent film called Dough. If you think that sounds a bit like Homer Simpson’s favorite epithet, you’re on the right track—it’s a comedy set in a kosher bakery, where Pryce’s character doesn’t realize that the new Muslim employee he’s just brought on board is…enhancing…the products with a certain special herb.
Though Pryce is technically out supporting the latter project this week, he can’t help but field questions about his Game of Thrones role. After all, Dough is about the religious tolerance between Jews and Muslims, which is a far cry from the total intolerance of the High Sparrow. Pryce admits to Vulture that, up until Game of Thrones, he mostly refused to play the intolerant types at all, but that he made an exception for Game of Thrones.
It’s interesting to play him, because in the past, I’ve been completely unsympathetic to what some characters are saying, any kind of right-wing character, any kind of extremist character, and I’ve shied away from taking those roles. I don’t want to be that person. And yet I went into the High Sparrow aware of that. Everything he’s doing this season was hinted at in the last season, and his intolerance is there for all to see. I quite like the fact that people are going, “Oh, he’s a horrible character!” And I’m going, “No! He’s one of the good people in Game of Thrones! He’s clearing out all the bad people!”
And although Pryce agrees that Cersei might have had punishment coming, he’s not interested in playing a man who’s doing the wrong thing but for the right reasons, or vice versa, depending on your point of view. He likes that the the High Sparrow doesn’t show his hand. Everything he does he does with his guard up high, a smile affixed to his face. “He smiles and smiles and plays the villain. His smile is as important as his actions.”
High Sparrow appeared for me right about the same time that Pope Francis became pope, and the PR surrounding him at the time was that he was a man of the people. That he would get down with the poor and the maimed, and he would wash their feet. And that’s how you see High Sparrow. He is a man of the people. And a lot of what the High Sparrow wants — to do away with the hierarchy, to promote the revolution of the working man, to represent the people abused by the ruling classes, the monied classes — a lot of that is very good. It’s just along the way, his beliefs are not the greatest, given that he’s quite homophobic and bigoted. But he is a classic revolutionary…. in season six you’ll find out more about the High Sparrow, about what drives him, how he came to be who he is, and why he’s on this journey.
The comparisons to the current Pope don’t end there, either. Pryce has been told by fans that they think he looks a bit like the Pope. He says he doesn’t really see it, but others do, and that choosing the role seems to have opened up the chance to play Pope Francis down the line. “The day it was announced… my agent in London got a call from a film company in Buenos Aires saying they wanted to make the life story of Pope Francis, and they wanted to sign me up. I do Jews good, but I don’t know about popes!”