Richard Madden brought the young and dutiful Robb Stark to life for three seasons on Game of Thrones before he attended the wrong wedding and died. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about his popular new series, Bodyguard, Madden enthusiastically gave his prediction for how the show would end. “I kind of think it’s just going to be three dragons flying around and everyone else is dead,” he said, probably smiling like a psycho. “It’s a possibility!”
We hope he’s off the mark, although he’s not the first former cast member to forecast doom. Just the other day, Aiden Gillen (Littlefinger) gave an equally bleak prediction, while current star Gwendoline Christie’s (Brienne) said viewers will need “therapy” after season 8 is over. I’m sensing a theme.
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Of course, we can’t put too much stock in what Madden says. He has been off the show for a while, although he’s still a big fan:
"I can’t wait for the new season. I kind of don’t recognize that I was in it anymore because I’ve been watching so many years of it, and they talk about Robb Stark and I know who he is but I don’t see myself in that role. I’m just a viewer now, which is so good. That was one of the bad things about being in the show is you got the scripts so you knew what was going to happen next, and I’ve not had that for years, so now I can just truly enjoy it as a viewer, which is thrilling."
Since Game of Thrones, Madden has taken on more leading man roles, like his part in Bodyguard, where he plays a police sergeant and war veteran — David Budd — suffering from PTSD. By the time he was written off Thrones, he was ready for that kind of role. “I was a kid when I started Game of Thrones and I learned a lot through it and grew up doing it and left at the right point when I was outgrowing that age of that character,” he said. “I was growing in age but the character wasn’t much.”
Bodyguard has proven popular around the world. Madden talked about how he got into character:
"I wanted to portray the PTSD part of his psyche accurately and gently and compassionately and in a fresh way that maybe I have not seen so much on television or film, where it’s not stereotypical. It’s not a case of someone drops a glass and you duck for cover and have these crazy flashbacks to the war. Although, I acknowledge that that can happen with PTSD. But a lot of people suffer from PTSD in a much more silent, much more unrecognizable way — a constant sense of dread or anxiety or difficulty dealing with their day-to-day lives, and that’s something that I really wanted to explore and get right."
Considering his Golden Globe nomination, we’re guessing Madden got that part right. The first season of Bodyguard is available to watch now on Netflix.
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