Fan Forum - View Single Post - Queen & Knight [Daenerys & Ser Jorah] #24: Because he would spend his last 24 hours writing a letter to her

Arawen · 07-27-2017, 02:50 AM

Great interview with John Bradley where he talks about Sam/Jorah and how he admires Iain as an actor. They put on the greyscale prosthetics on piece by piece

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The Hollywood Reporter discussed Sam’s scenes from this past episode with John Bradley, who is quite ecstatic about the reaction it got, though not surprised: “I knew it would be another memorable moment, and a visceral moment,” Bradley began. “Something that people are going to have a strong emotional connection to, and something people would be talking about. I was happy to be involved in something that was essential not just to my plot but also to Jorah’s storyline and how it impacts the Daenerys story. It was nice to feel like a part of that and the wider landscape and story. I was really happy for Sam as well. He’s taking matters into his own hands. He’s being brave. He’s defying authority. He had that dragonglass moment at the end of the first episode, and now he has another moment here where he can save somebody’s life. It’s nice for him that he’s now fulfilling his promises and putting his skills to good use.”

That doesn’t mean it was an easy shoot, however. In fact, it was a highly technical scene:

“Iain had to get up at 3 AM every morning we were filming those sequences,” Bradley revealed. “He had to sit there in a prosthetics trailer while they applied these really detailed and intricate greyscale prosthetics, piece by piece. That was a very long process. When I was peeling sections of that off, I was basically peeling the plastic latex prosthetic off of Iain’s actual body. He was kind of in a suit, and then there were a few parts with more give than what I could take off, which made it easier. It was the same as pulling away a prosthetic. It was a very, very big technical job for the prosthetics department. There were about five or six guys on set that day that you can’t see but were just out of the camera line, there with pumps and buckets of pus.”

After going into even greater detail about exactly how equally difficult and disgusting the scene was to film, Bradley moved on to the stone-man himself, Iain Glen:

“It’s quite a grueling process to have all of that applied to you, and you just have to sit back and stay still,” Bradley commiserated. “It’s quite a grueling experience to have four or five people swarming around you for hours at a time. I tried to be respectful in between shots and takes, giving him as much quiet time as I could. He needed to save some energy for the takes. It was a big job, to put across that level of pain and discomfort, the agony that his character is in. It’s a big acting job,” he told THR. “When you hear [Jorah’s howling], it really kind of pierces through your heart. The idea of a man being in such agony and being so uncomfortable … it was so distressing to hear … I think he was exceptional. He was exceptional on the day, and the way Mark shot it and edited it, it was just such an interesting sequence. I’m so happy that I got to be a part of it and to share the screen with Iain Glen. I’ve admired him for so long. I think he’s amazing.”

Once John was done with even more gushing about Iain Glen (who wouldn’t), he moved on to the commonalities between their characters, and the link that unites them:

“He feels he owes a debt to Lord Commander Mormont, and that’s what links those characters together … It was nice to play the part of meeting somebody you have this connection with, and somebody whose life you instantly want to save. There was something really beautiful about putting these two characters together. It was another one of the ways where the show can link two characters who you think have nothing in common, but it turns out they do and it’s really lovely.”

Maybe Sam and Jorah couldn’t have connected back when we first met them in season one, but they have both gone through a lot, especially Sam, as Bradley explained in detail to The Hollywood Reporter: “He walks into the room and sets about his business. He’s not tentative in that moment at all. He’s not dancing around Ser Jorah in a reserved and hesitant way like he normally would. He goes in and becomes the boss of that room. He tells Ser Jorah what to do. ‘Drink that, bite on that, take off your shirt.’ It’s a much more assertive side of him than we’ve seen before. We never even approached 10 percent of how assertive and confident he was in that moment. It’s all about stripping away all of that emotional baggage. Actually, it’s an interesting metaphor. He’s stripping away Jorah’s physical scars as he’s shedding his own psychological scars. They’re both shedding unwanted stuff. Jorah’s is physical and Sam’s is emotional, but they’re both progressing. You can see Sam’s progression this season already. He’s no longer willing to be shat on by life. He’s going into situations and taking control and doing things only because they’re the right thing to do. I love that progression for him this season.”

Nathalie Emmanuel on Missandei & Grey Worm romance and John Bradley on Sam's gruesome scene with Jorah in "Stormborn" | Watchers on the Wall | A Game of Thrones Community for Breaking News, Casting, and Commentary