Jim Broadbent reveals big details about his character in Game of Thrones season 7

Months ago, HBO announced that Oscar-winner Jim Broadbent will have a “significant” role in Game of Thrones season 7. He’s one of the bigger-name actors HBO has landed for the show. He appeared in Moulin Rogue!, won an Academy Award for Iris, and played Professor Horace Slughorn in two of the Harry Potter movies. Honestly, he’s probably the show’s biggest get since Sean Bean played Ned Stark, although we don’t expect him to have as important a role.

Up until now, we haven’t been sure what kind of role Broadbent will play at all. However, he recently revealed quite a lot of information to ScreenCrush (after saying he couldn’t reveal anything, naturally). Let’s hit the highlights. Beware SPOILERS!

• “I’m a maester, an archmaester. I’m an old professor character.”

So Broadbent will be playing a maester, as many fans have predicted. Screencrush thinks he’ll be playing Archmaester Marwyn, a memorably assertive maester Sam encounters shortly after arriving at the Citadel in A Feast for Crows. But we’ve heard he’s more likely going to play Archmaester Ebrose, a minor character from the novels who specializes in healing. Or, knowing this show, he may be a composite character of several maesters from the books.

• Broadbent shares his scenes with Sam.

That’s no surprise. Last we saw Sam, he, Gilly and Little Sam had just arrived at the Citadel in Oldtown, and Sam was openly gawking at its impressive library. He’ll need someone to guide him through the maester-in-training process. That’s probably where Broadbent’s character comes in.

• “I did five episodes. I did sort of one major scene in each episode.”

Keep in mind that Game of Thrones season 7 only has seven episodes, so Broadbent’s character appears in over half. That’s more than we expected, but if you hire Jim Broadbent, you might as well use him.

Another reason we don’t see Broadbent playing Marwyn: in the books, Marwyn leaves the Citadel more or less immediately after Sam arrives, gone to seek out and advise Daenerys Targaryen. That’s still possible, but we figure the show will want to keep Broadbent’s maester character in Oldtown to provide a sounding board for Sam.