Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) doesn’t miss Game of Thrones all that much

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau may have played Game of Thrones’ Jaime Lannister for nearly a decade, but he found it pretty easy to say goodbye.

When Game of Thrones ended last year, it was an emotional time for fans and stars alike. After a decade of getting to know these characters — and in the case of the actors and actresses, taking a deep dive into their heads — saying farewell was understandably difficult. One star appears to have been slightly more prepared for the change, though: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, aka Jaime Lannister.

Speaking with The Independent, Coster-Waldau revealed that he doesn’t miss playing the man Cersei once referred to as “the stupidest Lannister.” In fact, despite spending a decade taking Jaime’s character from one of the most hated on the series to one of the most interesting and complex, he found it pretty easy to say goodbye.

“Shall I be honest now?” the actor quipped. “What I think you’d want to hear if I were you is, ‘Oh God, I was depressed for weeks; it was so difficult to get over it.’ We’d spent 10 years together so, by virtue of that, it was an emotional moment because it suddenly came to an end. But half an hour later?”

"It took me 10 years to understand things come to a natural end. Now, I’m just an old, cynical, cold-hearted man."

Of course, parting ways with his Game of Thrones character may have been made easier by the fact that Coster-Waldau had tackled many other characters during that time period — some of which, evidently, took up more space in his mind.

“Over those eight seasons, I did two films every year more or less,” Coster-Waldau said. “But obviously the success of the show, which is so enormous, makes however big those other successes are pale in comparison. I worked more weeks on other shows than Game of Thrones. In my world, those other jobs took up much more space than Jaime Lannister did.”

If anything, that seems to be a compelling reason for fans to look into Coster-Waldau’s other performances and see if they’ll also become more attached to those characters. Some if his most recent projects include The Silencing, The Day We Died and Exit Plan.

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