Game of Thrones star recalls how the Red Wedding changed everything

Miltos Yerolemou only played Arya Stark’s water-dancing teacher Syrio Forel for one season on Game of Thrones, but his influence went far beyond that. After all, Syrio coined one of the most iconic phrases to come out of the series, “Not today,” and continues to give water-dancing lessons to fans even all these years later.

“I never expected the phrase to become a part of pop culture,” Yerolemou said on a recent interview with Game of Laughs. “We never do, you know. We just say the lines and make a good scene, but I never thought that. Let’s put it this way, on my grave stone, on my own grave stone, I’ve already decided that I’m going to have not today with not crossed out on it. I’m fully on board.”

"It’s quite remarkable. I’ve had very powerful experiences. I feel really humbled and I feel great pride in having played a character people have loved so much. I never take it for granted. Especially when I meet people, sometimes who are facing real difficulties in their lives, people facing death themselves, they tell me that those lines have given them great comfort. It’s overwhelming sometimes, I’m always humbled by that…I get a lot of requests from fans to write “Not Today” on their bodies. And then they get turned into a tattoo. I think that’s the weirdest thing I’ve been asked to do."

The gravestone thing is completely inspired. That’s a fun idea for anyone, not just him.

Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) remembers Game of Thrones

Although Yerolemou only lasted one season on the show, he got to watch from a distance as it became a cultural phenomenon, which must have been surreal. “It’s hard to imagine this now because of what we know Game of Thrones to be,” he said. “This became a show beyond that was successful, it became a cultural phenomenon. It was loved in places around the world where you usually don’t get a uniform kind of response. You know, South America, any place in the world that you can imagine, fell in love with the show. It’s the reason why the ending was so controversial because when you have that many people invested emotionally, invested in characters and story, it’s gonna cause a tsunami, of course, it is.”

"Most of the time you’re dealing with a few million here a few million there, but here you’re talking about billions of people who were invested in the show. So, the show answered that we didn’t, we had no idea, we wanted it to be a success, wanted it to talk the story the way we wanted. We wanted to do justice to the source material. That’s all we ever wanted to do, create something that is not instantly forgettable. But we never realized that we would create something like that."

He also points out something that some of the other fantasy shows of the moment, like The Witcher and The Wheel of Time, could do well to remember: Game of Thrones didn’t start out as a massive hit, but grew over time. “Remember, it was a slow burner, I remember the reviews in England, when the first season came out,” Yerolemou recalled. “They weren’t that good. They were quite mediocre. A lot of them said they were a bunch of RAC actors. I remember because I read those. So it was a slow burn.”

"And it was only by the time we got to season 3 that everything started kicking off. Once people watched the Red Wedding, they were like, oh my god. We have no idea what is going on in this show. From that moment on, that’s when I had felt it changed, it really changed then. Everyone started writing about it. It became bigger than just a TV show. People were quoting it on the internet, politics, politicians were quoting it. It was a slow burner but yeah, by the point of season 3, the whole world was on board."

We’ll see if HBO can make lightning strike twice when the prequel show House of the Dragon premieres next year.

As for Yerolemou, you can see him in the upcoming Dangerous Liaisons TV show on Starz, as Antoine.

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h/t Wiki of Thrones