One extra’s incredible journey to get on Game of Thrones

It takes a village to raise a child or mount an elaborate fantasy TV show. We Game of Thrones fans know the big names associated with the series: your Kit Haringtons, your Emilia Clarkes…but the show was a decade-long effort by hundreds of professionals, all of them working just as hard as the principals.

That includes extra Andrew McClay, who was the focal point of the Game of Thrones documentary The Last Watch. He popped up a lot over the course of the series, and as he told Game of Laughs in a recent interview, it had everything to do with his intense passion for the show.

“I’ve been reading the books for a very long time, and I watched season 1. I watched it like five times,” McClay said. “I wasn’t at Belfast at the time, I was way down the other end of Ireland. And it just came up at the very end of the episode that it was filmed in Belfast. And I was like, WTF! It’s filmed in Belfast? And I was like, I’m moving to Belfast man. I moved up here. I didn’t look like this at all.”

"I was like, I wanna be on Game of Thrones and what do I have to look like, right? So I grew a beard, and grew my hair and took a picture and uploaded it to their database, called the extras department. And I just looked (makes a grumpy face). The next thing I got was a call from the extras department and they asked if I’d like to be a part of Stannis Baratheon’s army. And I was like, “Holy Fu*ck!”"

That is inspiring. You want to do something in life? Then grow a beard, move house, grimace into a camera and get it done.

It’s also easy to enjoy McClay’s journey because he’s so clearly a fan of the series. “I mean King Stannis is totally warped and crazy in the books, but I loved him,” McClay continued. “I love characters that are interesting, like, I like my coffee black, and I like my Targaryens mental. Do you know what I mean? So if they’re like he’s a good king, I’m like I don’t wanna read a book about a good king, a good Targaryen, I wanna read about a mental one. Like Maegor the Cruel is my favorite Targaryen. So when I heard about Stannis Baratheon I was like, ‘Ohhh yeah! Please I’d love to!’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yes (nodding), that’s okay.’ And I was like, ‘Thanks so much!'”

Obviously, McClay is someone who pays attention to detail, so when Stannis was defeated at Winterfell in season 5, he thought his character was done. “I came back between season 5 and 6, and I didn’t think I’d be back after Stannis was defeated. But at the Battle of the Bastards, I got a phone call, to join, and I was like ‘Fu*k!’ Maybe they had forgotten that I was in Stannis’ army. So I waited for like two weeks while the Battle was going on, and I approached Tanya, the head of the department.”

"I was like, “Hey Tanya, I was a part of Stannis Baratheon’s army and his army was wiped out.” And she’s like, “You see, we’d thought about that, and your guy, he survives that. He’s a survivor from that battle. And you go and live in the woods in season 5 and season 6. And you hear Jon Snow is looking for men to fight at the Battle of the Bastards, and you with this ragtag band of guys come out of the forest to join his army. You get revenge against the Boltons.” And I was like, “Oh yea! That’s fuc*ing brilliant!”"

Wouldn’t it be fun to be the person on the set who’s job it is to think up in-world justifications for why things happen they way they do? I would love that gig.

Andrew McClay hopes the House of the Dragon extras have as much fun as he did

McClay’s time on Game of Thrones is over, but who’s to say he couldn’t show up on House of the Dragon, HBO’s upcoming prequel series? Maybe this soldier had an ancestor who fought in the Dance of the Dragons?

“We were shooting for the Long Night and were shooting for like 55 long nights,” McClay remembered. “And in Northern Ireland, we had the stormfront coming called the ‘Beast of the East.’ It was fuc*king freezing. Whenever you’re sitting in between takes which could be a long time. You’re sitting in a huddle of guys. You get to know these guys very very well. It was the best fun I’ve ever had.”

"The extras that are gonna be on House of The Dragon, I hope they have as much fun shooting the show, and I hope they bring the fire like we brought the fire on the show because we were like fuc*ing crazy, you know what I mean."

House of the Dragon premieres in 2022.

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h/t Wiki of Thrones