Kerry Ingram reflects on Shireen’s brutal death, and other remembrances

When Game of Thrones began to go “off book” as it were, first in small moments in Season 4 and then more widely in Season 5, is was thrilling for book-readers, who were finally getting the first new information on the events in Westeros since 2011. But what no one seemed to consider was that, as we got deeper into uncharted territory, the closer we were to deaths we didn’t know were coming.

Where scenes like Ned’s execution and the Red Wedding were known years in advance, it seemed like we blithely went into Season 5 acting like there wasn’t another one around the corner. (Other than Jon Snow’s, which we also knew about.) Perhaps that’s why Shireen Baratheon’s burning at the stake (a confirmed scene coming in a later book, we assume in The Winds of Winter) was such a shock to viewers, even though the show had been telegraphing it for weeks. In a new interview at ComicCon Copenhagen, Kerry Ingram, who played Shireen, reflected on the experience.

"The most challenging thing with that scene was, everything that Shireen has done I could relate to something in my life, one of her scenes, except for this one, cause I’ve never been burned alive…I kind of played it just the emotions without any backstory."

I think she got the message across.

"The reactions were really, really nice, and at the same time, quite hilarious…As it was leading up to the scene, I started getting tweets, and they literally just said “No. No! NO!” And it was the funniest thing…We expected sort of that kind of response but not as cool as it was. I think it was really nice to see how many people enjoyed Shireen."

As Kerry says, she is next tackling a Netflix original show about a girl’s special bond with a horse. (It makes use of the horse-riding abilities she learned on Thrones, naturally.) Currently, the series, aimed at tweenagers, has the snappy titled of Untitled Horse Mystery Project. Hopefully her character will have a happier fate there. It seems impossible that she wouldn’t.

But if you think Shireen’s death had us shook, that was nothing like the first true Red Wedding-level death shocker that came in Season 6. Hodor’s death was perhaps the biggest gut punch the show delivered last year. But that doesn’t come up during a recent Game Informer interview with actor Kristian Nairn. Being a jolly fellow, he talks about the videogames he played on the set of Game of Thrones. After all, one does tire of talking about being a human doorstop after a while.

Highlights:

• When Nairn does shows as a DJ, people show up in GoT cosplay, including men who dress up as Daenerys.
• It was hard to play online games on the set of Game of Thrones, because the wifi sucked.
• When they first met, Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran) dropped Nairn’s iPhone.
• Nairn has an ambition to design videogames.
• No matter how often Nairn asked Martin about Hodor’s origin, George R.R. Martin never revealed anything.
• “You’re not a Codor?” Geddit?

But one death we did see coming was Tywin Lannister’s. Charles Dance was in Washington, DC recently for the annual Harman Center for the Arts Gala to accept the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre. He sat down with The Washington Post to discuss his career, and Game of Thrones inevitably came up.

"The scripts for ‘Game of Thrones’ are superbly written. And we’re usually wearing leather and suits of armor and that sort of thing. Those of us who aren’t taking our clothes off, that is. I felt at home. I felt I was doing Shakespeare."

In 400 years if people are still acting out the Red Wedding, we’ll know why.

h/t Hypable