Isaac Hempstead Wright on how the cast and crew is handling the end of Game of Thrones

Isaac Hempstead Wright, aka Bran Stark, has been promoting Game of Thrones season 7 pretty hard lately. He’s been giving lots of interviews, and Vulture snagged one more during Wright’s recent appearance at the Madison Square Garden performance of the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience.

For those who may not know, Wright is a musician himself — he started playing piano at a young age. So he has some opinions on the Live Concert Experience. “I love “Light of the Seven,” because that’s the first time the piano’s ever been used in the show’s score,” he said. “And it’s such a key moment as well. I think it’s a really clever use of the instrumentation there, to suddenly have this totally foreign sound, for their world, in such a pivotal scene. I haven’t actually learned that song on the piano yet, but the really clever part of it is how the cello and the organ and all these different things move in and out, in a minimalist fashion.”

"All the tunes Ramin [Djawadi, the show’s composer] has done are really wonderful because they’re not really in the medieval genre. They’re not just one thing. Hearing him play it with an orchestra is pretty spectacular."

But it’s not all fun and rousing songs about exploding churches. We’re coming up on the penultimate season of Game of Thrones here, and Wright admits there’s a certain melancholy on set as the end draws near. “[T]o not come in and see the same faces, to see the same crew, and the same irreplaceable actors, it’s going to be really sad. And so there is that wistful atmosphere on set at times, and people going, ‘Oh, we’re so close!'”

That may apply just to the actors, incidentally, since they “pop in and out.” The producers, on the other hand, “they’ve literally been living on set in Belfast. So I think they’re probably ready to call it a day, and not be quite so nostalgic. They want to go home and actually sleep!”

So how are the actors commemorating the end of this era? “Every experience we have not yet had together, we need to have them quickly. Karaoke night is high up on the list now. I think a bunch of people are talking about getting a tattoo together. Getting the “O” with the three lines through it.”

"I hope when it’s all done, they will let people on the sets look around, because it will no longer be a secret, and the sets are just truly works of art. There is a lot of stuff that needs to be preserved. The amount of collective hours, all the time and detail for these massive set pieces, should be some sort of museum exhibit."

Considering its popularity and all it’s done for the economy of Northern Ireland and elsewhere, I’d be shocked if some organization didn’t set up some kind of Game of Thrones museum exhibit after the show wraps. It’s definitely become part of television history, and it isn’t even over yet.

One other quick hit before we go: Oscar winner Jim Broadbent is joining the Game of Thrones cast for season 7, playing an archmaester of the Citadel. He pointedly didn’t reveal any new details about the role when talking to the Los Angeles Times, but did discuss why he took the part.

"I don’t think I’m allowed to say anything. Being on the show hadn’t occurred to me. I haven’t been watching. [But] it seemed like a good thing to be part of, a bit like when I was asked to be in ‘Harry Potter.’ You’re like, ‘Oh, that’s something good to get ticked off.’"

Yes, in addition to winning an Oscar for Iris, Broadbent also played Professor Horace Slughorn in two of the Harry Potter movies. If he manages to snag a role in a Star Wars movie, he’ll be a nerd king.