Eugene Simon (Lancel) on Cersei choosing violence in “No One”

We’ve been looking forward to this moment ever since we saw Cersei utter those fateful words in the first full-length trailer for Game of Thrones Season 6 (the one HBO has weirdly taken down): “I choose violence.” She’ll say that line this Sunday in “No One,” after she and her faithful companion, the Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson) are confronted by Faith Militant foot soldier (and former Cersei paramour) Lancel Lannister. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, actor Eugene Simon, who plays Lancel, described what’s about to go down. “The feeling of the scene that’s coming in episode eight is one of a huge fight of power going on between Lancel and Cersei,” he said.

"This is about trying to determine the boundaries of how much power the Faith is now capable of exerting on Cersei, and basically the Crown. There’s still a fight to be had. This battle, this war is not won. I think what fans should really keep an eye out for is who did it look like is going to break first: the Faith or the Crown? They will see by the end of that scene that there’s still a lot more work to do."

Apparently, it was also a very complex scene to shoot, due to the stunts involved.

"While we were shooting it, it took about two-and-a-half days to maybe finish it because there was a little bit of stunt work that had to be done and some kind of prosthetic work to properly get across the awfulness that happens in it, which was very fun. Hafthor is an absolutely enormous human being. He’s one of the strongest men in the world, possibly the strongest man in the world. But while shooting it, that guy is wearing 28 kilos, about 58 pounds worth of solid armor. It’s seriously heavy stuff for one thing. So he really fits the part as much as looking it."

Simon also discussed his character’s conversion to the Faith, and if he believes the church is doing right by behaving in such a violent way. As he sees it, the violence isn’t ideal, but it’s about picking the lesser of two evils and reigning in the wicked behavior of the Crown, which to him is represented by Cersei. He sees it as a political choice more than a personal one, and seems to think that Lancel still cares for his father, Kevan. But it’s a matter of choosing sides, and his dad’s chosen the wrong one.

Oh, and for the record, he thinks everyone in the Faith has bought Margaery’s conversion as genuine—he points to Septa Unella’s near-smile last week as Olenna raged against her as proof that, so far, everyone below the High Sparrow is buying it.

As for that fearsome weapon we see Lancel carrying:

"It is a pretty intense weapon. When you hold a sword, there is something sort of elegant about swords. But there’s something about this cudgel with four little prongs at the end of it that is so sort of brutal, so sort of bludgeoning. It’s a quite extraordinary thing to wield it but once you’re on set and in character it becomes second nature I guess. It weighs probably 15 pounds, maybe 20. It’s a proper bit of kit."

We’ll see how effective it is against an undead Mountain soon enough.