“Hey, they were in Game of Thrones”—Where else have you seen these 55 GoT cast members? (Part 2)

12) DEOBIA OPAREI

He was huge, loyal and magnificent, but London-born actor Deobia Oparei’s character Areo Hotah died in the mire of the Dornish storyline, and we have to say “we hardly knew ya.” Oparei certainly had a handle on the Hotah’s character, as he detailed in an interview with HungerTv.com:

"He’s loyal (Horah). He reminds me, although George R R Martin wrote very distinct characters, I do see shades of Brienne of Tarth in Areo – his absolute loyalty. Just as Brienne is wedded to her sword, he is wedded to his axe. He describes it in the books as his wife. He’s the eyes and ears of Dorne, and he has to be. He’s like the FBI, he’s the FBI of that world."

Now we wish we’d seen more of him.

Oparei has had roles in big films like Alien 3 (1992), Dark City (1998), Moulin Rouge! (2001, with Thrones costar Jim Broadbent), The Four Feathers (2002), Thunderbirds (2004), Doom (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and Independence Day: Resurgence (above, 2016).

We may not have had enough time to get to know Oparei on Thrones, but his personal story is fascinating:

"I was an angry kid. I grew up in a Nigerian immigrant family – a very fractured family … my father was violent, they [my parents] split up and I went to live with my mum in a women’s refuge: I became an angry child. I was full of anger and very disconnected from the world around me. [I went to] the Greenwich Young People’s Theatre … and it changed my life … I saw people like me on stage talking about things that I was going through: identity, poverty, racism… I was gobsmacked that you could do this and it was called a play."

Besides Thrones, Oparai has a lot of TV credits, including parts on Blood Rights (1990), One Child (2014), Proof (2015), Emerald City (2017), Santa Clarita Diet (2017) and The Orville (2017, above). Look for Oparei in the feature film Dumbo in 2019.