Generally, when the showrunners told a Game of Thrones actor their character was getting killed off, they accepted it with grace. But there was one time…
Game of Thrones was known for having a very friendly, cooperative set, with a minimum of drama and a lot of competent professionals eager to do a good job. “he problems we had to deal with over the years in terms of cast misbehavior was so minuscule compared to what most people deal with,” showrunner David Benioff said in the oral history book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon. “We only had, like, one or two d–ks in minor roles.”
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some spirited discussions along the way. When you work on a huge, complex set like this, tense situations will arise. For example, Benioff and his co-showrunner Dan Weiss were famous for calling up cast members before a season began to let them know if their characters were going to be killed off. Mostly, the actors accepted the news with grace, but Benioff remembers one conversation that went a little differently:
"One person argued with us on the phone for a half hour and then wrote a long letter why it was a mistake and still talks about it on whatever dumb forums he’s on."
Now, Benioff doesn’t say who this person is…but I have a pretty good guess. I would bet money that the actor who argued against his character being killed off was Ian McElhinney, who played the Kingsguard knight Barristan Selmy.
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
If you’ll recall, Barristan Selmy left Westeros after getting booted from the Kingsguard in season 1. He sought out Daenerys Targaryen and entered into her service, but died at the hands of the Sons of the Harpy in Meereen in season 5. It was one of the first big breaks the show made with George R.R. Martin’s books, where Barristan is still alive and ruling Meereen while Daenerys is lost in the Dothraki Sea.
McElhinney was one of the few cast members who not only read the A Song of Ice and Fire books, but really seemed to get invested in them. He’s admitted before that he pushed back against Barristan getting killed off early. “I did talk to them about it,” McElhinney said his death scene aired. “I gave some arguments of my own why I thought Barristan was kind of important in Daenerys’ story, important enough that he should stay in Daenerys story, and he didn’t.”
All that said, it sounds like McElhinney eventually made peace with the decision. “I think you have to accept – as I have accepted – that the demands of TV are different than the demand of book writing,” he said. “With TV, there’s a pressure to create a number of high points. One of the big things about this series – it’s true in the books and even more true in the series – is the surprise element, the shocks. They’ve got to keep that up because people expect that now. You can’t predict anything, but what you can predict is that there will be surprises.”
Overall, McElhinney said he’s grateful for his time on the show and what it did for his career, and if he pushed back a bit against his early exit, who can blame him?
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h/t TV Line