Kristian Nairn, who played gentle giant Hodor on Game of Thrones, is currently on the press trail hyping his new memoir Beyond the Throne: Epic Journeys, Enduring Friendships, and Surprising Tales, available now. He has lots of memories about the show, which he thinks got a bad rap in the final season, which was famously divisive among fans.
"It's not perfect, no," Nairn told Screen Rant about the show's controversial ending, which involved Daenerys Targaryen burning down the city of King's Landing before getting killed herself by Jon Snow. "But also keep in mind I'm not a scriptwriter, neither are 99.99% of people. There are some who think they are, but I do know I'm not, so I have that. So disappointed me really. I don't feel responsible for it obviously, because I was long since dead. But it disappointed me because the show had been held in such high regard, and I don't think it deserved it. I don't think there was a way they could have ended it to keep people happy. There's never been a show in the history of television, I believe - maybe Breaking Bad, maybe - where people had been so invested in their characters and I think everyone had their own final fantasy of what was going to happen at the end with Daenerys, and any deviation from that, especially such an extreme one, it's going to piss them off."
"Although people say that Daenerys acted out of character and stuff and so quickly, but I just don't understand how they didn't see that throughout the show. I was waiting for it to happen the whole way. The signs were there guys. She actually said at one stage that as soon as Drogon's big enough, she's going to burn the ass out of King's Landing. And what happened? She did exactly what she said. The only criticism I have, and it's not really criticism, because I understand budgetary issues and stuff, but I just wish it was longer.
I don't think those longer episodes worked. I think it would've been better to have more episodes. The Michael Bay thing, that's how I explain it. There was a little of a sprinkling of Michael Bay put over the last season with the explosions and lots of dragons. They'd given us some of that, which had given us a hunger for them, and then all of a sudden, they were 'you're dinner's here, maybe it's not as appetizing as you thought.' Sometimes the thought of dinner is better than dinner."
It's true that Daenerys did talk about burning cities to the ground years before she torched King's Landing, and she was known to take some extreme actions — remember when she tied the Great Masters of Meereen to posts and put them up in the town square? Still, that's wasn't enough for a lot of fans, and I agree with Nairn that the show could have done with a couple more episodes to build up to the big endings twists.
"I just wish people were happier with it, because I really enjoyed it," Nairn concluded. "The scenes with Peter walking through the rubble and people said, 'oh God, I really wanted Cersei to get a really horrible death.' And what about their death? It was like a Renaissance painting. It was art. So much beautiful work, the music and stuff, and people are going 'that's s**t.' What are you talking about?"
Kristian Nairn knows he's never going to "top" Game of Thrones
Elsewhere, Nairn talked about how his mother was actually the one who convinced him to try out for Game of Thrones in the first place. "She'd read the books entirely, and that's what really turned me on to what the show was going to be. I had no clue," he told PEOPLE. "I was always interested to try out for auditions, I definitely would've been more enthusiastic about the whole audition process if I'd known . But I don't think any of us knew. None of us knew what that was going to turn into."
"The first couple of years, it felt like walking the plank. It was like trepidation. And then after that, [there] was a bit of expectation. After that, we were all kind of wishing to make sure it was as good as the previous seasons."
Nairn's best moment on the show was probably Hodor's death scene in the sixth season of the show, a complicated affair that involved time travel, zombies, and the relevation of why he was only capable of saying the word "Hodor." It ends up that Bran Stark, who has the power to peer back in time as well as possess people, possessed Hodor through his younger self during a visit to a Winterfell long gone, which had a ripple effect that left Hodor as we always knew him. That's the last thing we learn about Hodor before he dies holding a door against a wave of zombies intent on killing Bran and Meera, who are able to escape thanks to Hodor's sacrifice.
"People have asked me to explain what happened there, and I'm like, 'Well, it's not real. I don't have a scientific explanation.' I know we haven't ever time-jumped. If we have, it certainly hasn't made any of the press," he says. "I don't have an explanation... Think of it as a big quantum leap," Nairn said. "I read the script and was like, 'Okay, this is really cool.' But I couldn't imagine how cool it was going to be. Even filming, it was monumental. It was a big scene to film. It took weeks. But I still didn't expect that reaction."
Nairn may not fully understand exactly what happened in the scene — I won't claim I completely get it — but he knows that its power is real. "Where else in the world would a character who says one word, has kind of been in the forefront of the background for five seasons, become one of the top scenes of a show?" he asked. "It's bizarre, it really is. But you know what? It's such a privilege to have touched people in that way. If I never left another mark in the world — which I already have, so I'm happy about that — but even if I had left it at that, I think I would've been happy."
In addition to becoming an author, Nairn went on to star in shows like Our Flag Means Death, a pirate dramady that had a very passionate fanbase. At the same time, he realizes that he's probably never going to be on something as phenomenally popular as Game of Thrones again; you can't plan for that kind of thing. "I'm not going to top this," he said. "That was my first big acting role."
But at least he can keep doing interesting work, and he can pretty much guarantee that it'll be different from what he did on Game of Thrones. "But I think for me, because of the character that Hodor was, I don't think I'll ever top it, but it'll always be different, because Hodor is very different. Anything I do that speaks will be a very different role than Hodor, because I'll never do a silent role again."
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