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

52) BRENOCK O’CONNOR

Olly was an innocent farm boy from the Noth who escaped to Castle Black after the murder of his parents by a wildling raiding party. Played by the young English actor Brenock O’Connor, Olly is named as Jon Snow’s steward, but becomes disillusioned when Snow negotiates an alliance with the wildlings to battle the White Walkers.

Olly was originally intended to appear in only one episode, but his role was expanded to provide some extra weight to the deaths of Ygritte and Jon Snow. Olly’s participation in the mutiny against Lord Commander Snow made him one of the most hated characters in the show’s history.

O’Connor’s TV career began with Holby City (2012) and continued with programs like Chickens (2013), Dickensian (2015-2016, above), Casualty (2016) and Living the Dream (2017, below). His film credits include The Young Hunters: The Beast of Bevandean (2015) and Another Mother’s Son (2017).

O’Connor told the Express UK about the intense blowback he got following Jon Snow’s death scene:

"At the beginning I was getting quite a bit of hate. It was quite strange from no one really noticing my character to people sending hateful messages over Twitter and stuff but it’s sort of died down now."

But according to O’Connor, there was a bright side to the backlash:

"I just enjoy the fact that I had that much of an impact. It’s very rare for my character to get noticed really, so I was quite happy with the reaction that I got. When you do something bad, you want a bad reaction for it."

O’Connor is appearing in the TV series The Split and the film The Bromley Boys in 2018.