There’s big news coming from Entertainment Weekly: British actor Jim Broadbent will have a “significant” role on Game of Thrones Season 7.
Jim Broadbent looking freaky in Moulin Rouge!
This is a big get, even by Game of Thrones standards. Broadbent is an accomplished and decorated performer. His long list of credits includes turns as Boss Tweed in Gangs of New York, Professor Horace Slughorn in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dean Charles Stanforth in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, and Denis Thatcher in The Iron Lady, opposite Meryl Streep. Yes, Game of Thrones attracts some top-shelf talent, but acting alongside Meryl Streep brings things to a new level.
Broadbent has another big qualification: he’s won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for playing John Bayley opposite Judi Dench in 2001’s Iris. He’s a pretty big deal.
Jim Broadbent as Professor Kirke in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
What role will he be playing? That’s harder to determine. Recently, several casting calls for new characters leaked online. Per EW, such casting calls can be “deliberately deceptive,” but we may still find clues. It’s easy, for example, to picture Broadbent as a 60-something priest with “moral authority and gravitas.”
Congratulations to the Game of Thrones crew for nabbing Broadbent.