Actors play actors playing Game of Thrones characters in behind-the-scenes video from Girona

After a day off, yesterday Game of Thrones Season 6 got down to the business of filming that Mercy chapter from The Winds of Winter, as they shot the “play within a play” (well, “play within a show”) scene where Arya has joined a troop of Braavosi mummers who perform a Shakespeare-type retelling of the events of the last few seasons in King’s Landing.

According to Diari de Girona, a Joffrey look-a-like was spotted among the players. There’s no word of who will play the Richard III-type incarnation of “The Imp,” though the article claims that characters who were obvious stand-ins for Tyrion, Sansa, and Ned Stark were also spotted.

In this video, tweeted by a fan, you can see the actor playing “Robert Baratheon” with his big frizzy hair, paper crown, and a whole lot of drinking, as well as a very tall and thin blonde playing “Cersei.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F34KaOQSNsI

A little ways in to the video, a very blonde man steps into the frame. You can *almost* make out what “Cersei” is saying, but not quite. From what you can hear, he calls the “Robert” character “Father,” which pegs this character as Joffrey. “Robert” then slaps him. (It should be noted how much this retelling hews to the version of the story that Cersei would have put out, with Robert as a drunken abusive lout, Joffrey as a perfectly lovely prince who would have made a fine king, and Tyrion as evil and twisted.)

In the pics below you can see the players of King’s Landing through the Braavosi lens:

Here we can see “The Imp,” as his character is called. In the “Mercy” chapter, Arya plays the Sansa analogue, who the Imp rapes and murders, in one of my favorite ironic twists of this funhouse mirror retelling of the story. (It is never clear to us reading from her POV if she actually realizes that they’re reenacting everything that happened in King’s Landing after she left, or that she’s playing her own sister. But then again, she’s also not really Arya anymore at this point, since—as far as we’re aware—she’s pretty deep into her training to lose herself completely and become other people.)

From what Los Siete Reinos reports, Arya isn’t actually going to be one of the on stage players, but in fact sees the show from a distance and realizes she’s seeing what she missed, including Joffrey’s death. I’m a little sorry to hear it, if that’s true. But from the back, the “Sansa” walking with “the Imp” doesn’t look like Arya. They have a few more pictures of the players, including Varys and Ned Stark:

Joffrey from the front.

Ned, I assume? Who is that next to him?

That’s totally Varys.

Los Siete Reinos is also reporting that as filming ends in Girona, there will be a couple of field trips to filming areas that will stand in for parts of Essos (or perhaps Westeros) but not one that includes actors. Those areas are the Castle of Torroella and Besalú. They note that there have been rumors of filming in Besalú before that were debunked. Here are pictures of the area.

Here is a shot of Besalú. The bridge kind of looks like Volantis, no?

Castle of Torroella. No idea what background for a CGI marvel this will stand in for. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Next: Alejo Cuervo Says The Winds of Winter Expected “Next Year.