Alfie Allen’s character, Theon Greyjoy, aka Reek, hasn’t had the easiest time of it in Westeros. Ever since Greyjoy’s Rebellion in 289 AC, when his father failed to secure independence for the Iron Islands, his life never went the way he envisioned it. Forced to become the Starks’ ward in order to secure his father’s loyalty, he grew up seeing the family that raised him as the enemy. After he returned to the Iron Islands, he raided his own home at Winterfell, pretended to kill his own surrogate brothers to save face, and then was betrayed by his own men to Ramsay Snow, whereupon he spent an entire season being flayed and tortured and broken into the pathetic creature he is today.
The books didn’t depict Theon’s torture at Ramsay’s hands, a rare instance when they were more merciful than the show. As brutal as those scenes were, Allen doesn’t think they were the worst things he had to film. Speaking to the Australian outlet News.com.au, he says his worst days of filming of Game of Thrones, hands down, were when he shot last season’s wedding night scene with Sansa and Ramsay.
I don’t really want to talk about it all that much — but the Season 5 scene that was the wedding night between Ramsay and Sansa — was a horrible day to shoot. Sophie Turner is just such a mature, amazing lady that brings life and light on to the set in so many ways but it was a hard day. It really was a horrible day but Sophie really dealt with that issue very, very well.
Allen is currently down under to promote the Season 5 Bluray/DVD that arrives in stores everywhere tomorrow. That controversial scene was the tipping point for many fans, and the outlet asked if he thought it was overblown—after all, there were some just-as-horrific moments later in the season, like the burning of Shireen. He refused to categorize one as somehow worse than the other.
To be honest I thought people made more of a furor over the Sansa scene. But how do you compare them — the burning of a child to what happened in that room with Ramsay and Sansa? I guess with that scene, it happens off camera and what you don’t see is always going to be more terrifying when you just leave it to the imagination.
As for the upcoming seasons, unlike some one-off actors, Allen knows better than to spill any spoilery details about what’s the come. Pictures, like the one at the top of this post, have revealed that he and Sansa survive their leap from Winterfell’s walls, but he’s not saying anything about what the two of them will be doing next. All he’ll do is agree with everyone else in the cast about how good next season is: “It’s going to be bloody brilliant.”