Owen Teale (Alliser Thorne) talks his best moment on Game of Thrones

Caution: this post contains major spoilers for the events of “Oathbreaker,” last night’s Game of Thrones episode. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, go back while you still can! This is not the way! take heed and go no further! Beware! BEWARE! 

You remind me of spoilers
What spoilers? Spoilers with power
What power? Power of voodoo
Who do? You do
Do what? Remind me of spoilers!
—————————————————–

Last night, after Jon Snow came back to life, he did what we’d all been waiting for. He took revenge on those who killed him in the Season 5 finale. But this was no one-on-one beheading. Jon Still swung the sword, but in the interest of keeping the episode an hour long, he killed all the traitors by hanging in a single blow, including Olly, who had stabbed him in the heart, and Ser Alliser Thorne, who had been (no pun intended) a thorn in Jon’s side his entire time at Castle Black.

Thorne has been one of my favorite villains because he’s such a complex one. He’s an asshole, but he’s an understandable, relatable asshole. He’s been up at the Wall for years, and he doesn’t seem pleased about it. He has no joy, no hope, and he’s determined that everyone should feel the same.

Owen Teale, who has done so much to humanize Thorne during his time on the show, sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss his exit. And as any good Shakespearean actor would, he compared his best moments to ones from the Bard’s plays.

There’s a line in Macbeth, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving did.” This story plays into such a huge section of religion — resurrection. Confronted with Jon Snow, Thorne does not shy from it and is not in awe of it, but he lucidly sees the implications of what must it really be like to live with that responsibility, the sense of duty to yourself and all those mistakes that will be repeated. I think the writing is great — okay, you’ve been brought back to life, but do you really want to live forever? You’ve failed in your dream, and yes, you get to try again with your humanity, with the whole thing with the Wildlings. Alliser Thorne thinks Snow is going to be knocked down every time. Because Alliser sees human beings as being born bad — they’re needy, greedy, and selfish. It’s survival of the fittest. And if you open yourself and weaken yourself, you will be taken out by somebody else. Therefore Thorne also accepts it’s all over for him.

Teale admits he was a bit of a control freak this year—before he signed for Season 6, he forced the showrunners to actually tell him whether he would be going for yet another round, or if he would finally meet his end.

I kind of demanded a bit more openness because I was about to do my deal for season 6. I refused to close my deal until they told me. I wanted them to be clear with me. It was all quite close to filming. It wasn’t a very long conversation; it was a bit of mutual appreciation society.

After talking about how he had his doubts about Game of Thrones when he was first brought aboard to play Thorne (he did not appear in the role until a couple of episodes in—a different actor played Throne in the pilot), he has found some enjoyment in the newfound fame. He seems to have enjoyed it when a guy asked him to call him a bastard into his phone, for example. (Although he was given pause when a drunk with a knife approached him and asked him to reenact the “For the Watch” scene, non-lethally, of course.) Throne, he says, is not an easy character to have lived with, but he did everything he could to flesh him out.

I found the most important thing when playing the character was to just get rid of a whole section of feelings that I have as a human being — like joy, for instance, that’s just gone. Once I achieved that, in my mind, to look at Jon Snow, who has the world before him and talent and is this personable human being, to look at him while you’re feeling joyless, then Snow presses all the wrong buttons — that really helped to be able to react to him as a character and not as me.

As for the moment in the show he’ll always remember as his best, it’s the same one I would pick: during the Battle of Castle Black, before he is taken off injured, leading the Night’s Watch to battle in the courtyard. That was the episode that cemented Thorne as a leader, albeit an asshole leader, but still one worthy of respect.

That was my Henry V moment. I’ve never played Henry V, and that really was “once more unto the breach” as the Wildlings were coming over. That ticked a few boxes. The rain that was pouring so hard that night, it was like Blade Runner. They put some boards coming down like a boardwalk so you can walk into the courtyard because a huge amount of water was falling into a small area. But in the few minutes before we shot so much water had come down the boards had floated away. They said, “Just keep going!” There was something really exhilarating about it.

Farewell, Owen Teale. It may have been Alliser Thorne’s time, but you will be missed.