Joe Dempsie discusses Gendry’s potential importance in the game of thrones

After a three-year absence, Gendry, Robert Baratheon’s bastard son, returned to Game of Thrones in season 7. He did a lot of growing during his time off, making his own war hammer, coming to terms with his lineage, and apparently doing some cross-country running.

But in season 7, we didn’t get much on his potential for leadership. Fansite Watchers on the Wall asked Dempsie about Gendry’s importance in the story during an exclusive interview at Con of Thrones. “He’s sort of been a slow burner, hasn’t he?” Dempsie said. “For the first few seasons, I was getting itchy feet for more of a purpose for him, because he was mostly just serving as a foil for Arya. But even with those scenes, there are little nuggets that are dropped that are quite subtle.”

"As the years go on, his potential significance [has become] more and more apparent, and potential is an important word. There’s a lot of elements of his character and his parentage that make him potentially powerful or dangerous, and he’s constantly learning more about himself. It’s almost impossible to know where he’s going to go now, based on both his ‘political’ clout, if he ever learns who he is, and his personality."

Of course, Dempsie probably does know what direction Gendry is going to go — he’s filmed all of his scenes for season 8, after all — but he’s not going to reveal that to the media.

He did, however, speculate on how Gendry might be used in the game of thrones. For example, what could Daenerys do with the bastard son of the last king of Westeros who reigned for more than a year? “I don’t know — marry him?”

Dempsie doesn’t think such a match is out of the question — it would repair bridges between the Targaryens and the Baratheons, and might sway the people of the Stormlands over to Dany’s side — but when it comes to Daenerys, it’s hard for Dempsie to know where Gendry stands:

"The thing about Dany that we’re seeing is her unpredictability now — you just never know what she’s going to do,. What’s this quest for further power doing to her? Sometimes I don’t even know what she would do. She would just as likely marry Gendry as burn him alive."

Well, that’s given us something ominous to chew on.

At the moment, though, Daenerys has her eye on a different high-born bastard: Jon Snow. Even though Jon’s not actually a bastard, the world thinks he is, and Dempsie is happy to compare and contrast his story with Gendry’s, saying they’ve always been “trying to figure out who they are and where they sit in their own world.”

"They’re obviously from two very different worlds — Jon had privilege, even growing up as a slight outsider in a noble House, while Gendry has grown up in the streets without any kind of anchor, really. Jon has a slightly wider worldview and experience, having been part of the Night’s Watch, and it’s just slightly less far-fetched for someone like him to be involved in something like a life-or-death struggle for the realm. Until Gendry left Flea Bottom, he had a yearning for something more but didn’t have the confidence to leave or to see it for himself. But when they meet each other they still have a common bond in being bastards, not knowing their mothers, that kind of thing."

Dempsie elaborated on why Gendry would be a good candidate for leadership during his interview on the Con of Thrones main stage. “He understands the plight and the struggles of common folk, and I think that’s something that leaders in Westeros have roundly lacked.” As the interview said, he’s “the people’s candidate.” Gendry for the Iron Throne?

Here are some other Dempsie highlights from Con of Thrones:

• Going back to the Watchers interview, Dempsie named which characters he’d most like to see meet. “Definitely the Hound and the Mountain. They’re either saving it for something epic, or it will be one of those things they won’t be able to fit in, but I’d really love to see it.”
• Dempsie enjoyed the moment from “Eastwatch” where Davos Seaworth referenced the “still rowing” meme he himself started on Twitter. “[Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are] not averse to putting in some crowd- or fan-pleasing moments like that. That’s a tricky thing for [them], the idea that they’re keen to do their own thing, but knowing that the sooner you realize you’re not going to please everyone, the better. It’s treading the fine line between crowd-pleasing and jumping the shark, and I think they’re doing it beautifully.”
• On the main stage, Dempsie said a little more about Davos, or rather the man who plays him: “If you ever meet Liam Cunningham in real life, you’ll be even more impressed at the fact that he manages to play this stoic man of principle, cause the dude is nuts.”
• Dempsie revealed that he read the first two Song of Ice and Fire novels, but stopped when Gendry went off-book. “I don’t think there was any mention of leeches on [long pause] dicks.”
• Will Gendry make a new hammer now that he assumedly left his homemade one north of the Wall? “I’ll just have to make something new.”
• Finally, someone had to ask about the possibility of romance between Gendry and Arya Stark. Apparently, it’s a complicated topic for Dempsie: “I was asked about it quite a lot back then, and I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable, because the reality of the situation at the time was that I was a 25-year-old man being asked whether I wanted my character to hook up with a 14-year-old girl…So I never really know how to answer it in a way that I felt comfortable with…It would obviously be a lot more appropriate now. But more than anything, I’d be keen for the opportunity to work with Maisie again.”

And of course, Dempsie ruminated on the coming end of the show, and how he handled shooting his final scene:

"I thought I was gonna be all right [emotionally]. In the weeks leading up to it, there had been other actors that had been finishing for good, and even just being present to see them wrap was quite emotional at times…There were quite a few people finishing on the same day as me…I’m okay until I see someone else trying not to cry, at which point I’m done…It was an intense experience."

For more Con of Thrones goodness, check out our exclusive interview with Hannah Murray (Gilly)!

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