Aisling Franciosi talks playing Lyanna Stark on Game of Thrones

Aisling Franciosi wasn’t in Game of Thrones that much; as Lyanna Stark, she only appeared in a couple scenes and didn’t have that many lines. But Lyanna is a pivotal character; the war that kicked Daenerys’ father off the throne and banished her across the Narrow Sea was to some extent fought on her behalf. So even if Franciosi didn’t have much screen time, it packed a punch.

Franciosi recently talked to Looper about her time in Westeros, as well. “It was crazy, and I obviously knew how popular the show was, but I hadn’t seen a single episode when I read the audition,” Franciosi remembered. “And I actually accidentally ruined the plot for my agent, who was a big fan of the show. I was like, ‘I’m pretty sure there’s something missing from the scene, but like, this is what I can gather.’ He was like, ‘Firstly, oh my God, that would be so cool.’ And then he was like, ‘And also, oh my God, you just ruined this biggest spoiler for me.'”

The huge spoiler is probably that Lyanna is the actual mother of Jon Snow; she died in childbirth. Jon’s father is the late Rhaegar Targaryen, Daenerys’ brother. This was revealed in the season 6 finale, when Bran went into the past and visited Lyanna’s deathbed at the Tower of Joy. Lucky agent got to find out early.

Of everything she’s done, Aisling Franciosi gets asked about playing Lyanna Stark the most

Anyway, Franciosi soon filled herself in on all this lore. “Then I obviously started watching the show, and I actually hadn’t realized how much they talked about this character [Lyanna]. And, as you said, she obviously was the catalyst for pretty much the whole storyline. But I’m really happy to have been a part of it because it was such a cultural phenomenon, and it’s just really cool to have been a part of something so huge. I hope we have something else like it. I don’t mean necessarily in genre, but I mean watercooler-type show. You never know when that’s going to happen again.”

"It was strange because I’m in two scenes, and I think each one took a day to shoot, so it was very short and very quick for me. It was probably, on paper, the smallest role I’ve ever played. But it’s also one of the ones that people ask me about the most. So, yeah, it’s interesting."

You can currently see Franciosi star alongside Sandra Bullock in The Unforgivable, about a woman who tries to rebuild her life after spending time in prison for committing a violent crime.

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