Robert Aramayo joins Game of Thrones cast (Also: hints of who’s playing young Ned Stark)
By Dan Selcke
Deadline is reporting that Robert Aramayo, a young actor and Julliard graduate who will be appearing in HBO’s Lewis and Clark miniseries this year, has been cast in an unnamed role on Game of Thrones Season 6. Who might he be playing? We’ll get to that in a minute.
Robert Aramayo
First, let’s talk a little about Eddie Eyre, the actor who was cast in the mysterious role of “Ser Alfred Hunrith” a while back. Given his extensive sword-fighting experience, most people saw through that name and figured that Eyre was actually being cast as Ser Arthur Dayne, a legendary kingsguard knight slain by Ned Stark and company at the Tower of Joy.
Eddie Eyre
That assumption was bolstered when Eyre started tweeting about heading to Spain to film a scene that involved him fighting in armor. Those tweets came down the pipeline shortly before we started getting video and pics of a group of actors fighting at the Castillo de Zafra, which stands in for the Tower of Joy. Odds are good that Eyre is among those combatants.
But which one is he? Part of the reason for the Dayne assumption was Eyre’s headshot. The guy looked generally how we imagined Dayne to look. That’s changed recently though, after Eyre tweeted a photo of himself with a big ‘ol beard.
True, there’s no textual evidence (so far as we know) that Dayne had no beard, but the official artwork for the character shows him clean-shaven, and most readers probably picture him that way. It seems more likely at this point that Eyre is actually playing a young Ned Stark, who almost definitely had a respectable northern beard.
But if Eyre’s not playing Dayne, who is? A commenter at fansite Watchers on the Wall may have the answer. According to the commenter, “Luke Roberts has been in training for weeks and was joined last week by Eddie Eyre and Rob Aramayo.” Luke Roberts is an English actor known for roles in BBC dramas like Colby City and Mile High. This one is hard to verify, but Roberts certainly has the physical presence to play a character like Dayne.
Luke Roberts
Now, let’s get back to Robert Aramayo. If Eyre is playing a young Ned Stark, which seems likely, and Roberts is playing Dayne, which seems plausible, and the three of them all trained together, Aramayo may well be playing Howland Reed, Ned Stark’s friend who was present during the fight at the Tower of Joy. In the up-close video of the fight that surfaced earlier today, a figure sneaks up behind Dayne and stabs him in the back. Odds are that this is Reed, a short, diminutive man who hails from the Neck, an area just south of the North. In the books, Howland Reed is father to Jojen Reed, the young psychic Bran meets on his journey towards the Wall, which brings me to this.
Howland and Jojen Reed?
We’ll be on the lookout for confirmation on any of this.