Iwan Rheon looks back on the highs and lows of playing Ramsay Bolton

Karma finally caught up with Ramsay Bolton in “Battle of the Bastards,” where he was fed to his own hounds as so much human dog chow. But what about the man behind the monster? Actor Iwan Rheon looked back on his time as one of television’s most hated characters in an interview with GQ, starting with his final scene in the dog kennel with Sansa:

"It was a pretty uncomfortable day for me, covered in all that crap, tied to a chair all day. I can finally empathize with how [Alfie Allen, who plays Theon Greyjoy] must have felt in season three. But it was cool. The dogs aren’t there, you know? That’s all done in post, because they really are brutal beasts. You’re not allowed to look at them in the eye. If you pet them, they’ll kill you. So it was kind of strange—I just had to imagine the dogs. But it was also lovely. Very fitting to have a final scene with Sansa."

Ramsay Bolton is the kind of slinky character we might expect to avoid dying on a battlefield, but did how did Rheon himself think his character might expire?

"I didn’t really know. I’ve been teasing journalists all along, saying I wanted a dragon-related death. But I think this is a very fitting death, and a very just death, with some sense of irony. He’s been banging on about these dogs for so long—and all of a sudden, he’s their meal."

As for playing the monster-sadist Ramsay Bolton, Rheon was able to prevent the character’s dark shadow from leaching into his real everyday life:

"It’s all right, you, know? I try not to bring my work home with me. The thing about Ramsay is that because he’s actually happy, it’s weirdly easier to play than characters that are introverted, carrying all their darkness inside. That makes it more tiring. You kind of let everything out with Ramsay. But there are the scenes you sort of dread, obviously—these horrific things he does. But it’s okay. I’m quite good at detaching."

And what scenes did Rheon dread doing? Sansa’ rape scene was definitely his most difficult day on set.

"The rape scene [on Ramsay and Sansa’s wedding night] is the one. That was the hardest one for me by far, because of the reality of it. Thinking about it. It’s just so horrible—and to have to do that. That was a very difficult scene to shoot. But you just have to get on with it, you know? You’re a professional actor, at the end of the day, and you do a lot of this shit. It’s what you have to do. Sophie was great—she was a real pro. But it was a very somber sort of feeling on set that day. Everyone knew what was happening, and how horrible it was."

And although Ramsay could come off as a one-dimensional villain created to torture just about every other character he could get his hands on, Rheon believes that the character had more depth to him.

"And I think this season, in particular, really showed that: how he reacted to killing his dad, and how he reacted to Myranda being dead. I think most people assumed he wouldn’t give a fuck—but it actually does distress him. Massively. Killing his dad was obviously something he had thought about, and he knew it eventually might happen if a son was born—but in that moment, it just happens, and it catches him by surprise…He’s not just completely an emotionless psychopath, devoid of empathy."

Rheon even thinks that Ramsay “sort of respects Jon Snow,” since, as Northern bastards, they have a lot in common. Still, he stops short of saying that Jon and Ramsay could have been friends under different circumstances. Let’s not go nuts.

As he moves on the next stage of his career, Rheon admits that he isn’t going to miss Ramsay Bolton much, but he is going to truly miss being part of such a great cast and crew. “It’s going to be really strange this year not going back to Belfast and starting it all over again,” he said. There are probably a lot of fans who won’t be sorry to see Ramsay go, either, but we do appreciate all the hard work Rheon put in to giving us a character we could hate so passionately.