Aidan Gillen talks about Littlefinger’s weakness for Sansa and Catelyn

Aidan Gillen is a very busy man. On May 12, you’ll be able to see him as good guy Goosefat Bill Wilson in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Meanwhile, he’s filming scenes for season 4 of Peaky Blinders as well as the third and final installment in the Maze Runner trilogy, The Death Cure. Irish Central caught up with him to discuss his current body of work, including Game of Thrones.

First, an interesting question: Irish Central asked Gillen if his Irish heritage helped him play Littlefinger, who “isn’t powerful so must use his cunning to one stay ahead”? Gillen hadn’t really thought of it that way, although he conceded that “the Irish did use language, as did any oppressed people.”

"But I don’t want to get into 800 years of oppression, I really don’t, and I’ve never really thought about it in terms of Game of Thrones. The thing about Baelish is that he definitely is an outsider and he has worked his way up and out of his class and into the higher echelons of the courts. He is very much still an outsider though, and he’s still pretending to be something that he’s not."

But who is he at bottom? Does anyone on the show know the real him? “I think we saw a little of it with Sansa and her mother Catelyn Stark.”

"He’d be a little less guarded. The one weakness that he has, the one era where he could be exposed or trip up is the emotional one regarding Sansa or Catelyn. But it hasn’t really been an issue. He hasn’t slipped up."

Ah, but what about the time he left Sansa at Winterfell with Ramsay Bolton, apparently unaware what a monster he was? Gillen seems to acknowledge that that, at least, was a slip-up.

"I think he should have known. But it would just have been beyond cruel and also it would have been stupid. It’s unlikely that he would have planned that. He did put her in this place and he should have been smarter about it."

We’ll see more of Littlefinger and Sansa when Game of Thrones returns on July 16.