Actors: Players of the Game

[ElizaD]

The casting of GOT has received a lot of praise. Often the talent of the actors has elevated storylines that were already good or saved scenes when the writing and plotting weren't at their best. Who has delivered a great portrayal of a book character? Who has gotten you interested in a storyline you didn't expect to enjoy? And who should have been put in the boat of abandoned plotlines and sent rowing with Gendry, never to return?

[Lady S.]

Jack Gleeson was a gift and a treasure in every scene. But the stableboy Arya stabbed was easily the worst child actor in the series. Yes, these are my most immediate thoughts on the subject.

[Ambrosefolly]

Stephen Dillane. I think he really sold the moral decay that his character went through over the last few years, to get what he thought was his by right, to actually get to the point that he would actually burn his daughter alive. 

Edited June 18, 2015 by Ambrosefolly

[Avaleigh]

Michael McElhatton. He totally made Roose's character unexpectedly enjoyable for me. 

 

Indira Varma is a good actress but she isn't so good that she was able to rise above the crap material that she was given with the character of Ellaria. 

 

Oh and Filch being cast to play Walder Frey. I love whoever made that happen. 

[anyanka323]

The child actor who played Ollie was awful.  GoT has has extraordinary luck with casting child actors, but this one fell flat.  It would have been different if Ollie had been killed in his intial appearance, but he appeared in multiple episodes. 

[jeansheridan]

Definitely Bronn. Very charming on screen. Yara Greyjoy is great. Don't know the actresses' s name but she was great with almost no screen time. Lena is an amazing Cersei. I knew she would save The Walk from being trashy.

[Funzlerks]

Ciaran Hinds as Mance Raydar reminds me that a great actor in a great role still can flop if it isn't good casting. I halfway wonder if that is why they changed the course of Mance's story. I have never thought Indira Varma was more than passable but she keeps getting cast in things I quite like. I am curious to see Emilia Clarke in other roles. I liked her in season one and half of season two and she does seem to have the charisma to handle the big scenes where she is mainly quiet or shouts in a foreign language. But I find her pretty flat in most scenes and I wonder if she, the actor, is not into it any more.

[jeansheridan]

Clarke will be Me Before You. Should be great. Working class British woman who cares for a quadriplegic.

[Macbeth]

Maisie Williams is so good, and she was so young when she was cast.  Given that the role she was meant to play was that of a child assassin, it was a phenomenal casting.

 

 

[AshleyN]

Maisie Williams is so good, and she was so young when she was cast.  Given that the role she was meant to play was that of a child assassin, it was a phenomenal casting.

I was rewatching some of the earlier episodes and it's really amazing to me how seamlessly she's handled Arya's transition from rebellious, but still very much innocent tomboy to the revenge-obsessed and increasingly soulless killer she's become. It's a pretty dramatic character arc for such a young actress to tackle but she's nailed it every step of the way.

[Elkins]

I am consistently blown away by the performances of the smaller roles on this show. The principals are great too, don't get me wrong, but in many ways, it is the smaller parts that really make the show for me. There are so many, but just off the top of my head:

 

Joel Fry's Hizdahr. He (with a strong assist from the script) took a character about whom I could remember from the books nothing save his plot function and transformed him into the most intriguing character of the season for me. Now that he's gone, I find that my interest in the Meereen plotline has faded dramatically.

 

Donald Sumpter's Maester Luwin. Another character who made little impression on me in the books, only to really stand out for me on the show. Sumpter invested his Luwin with so much genuine warmth. His feeling for the Stark children was palpable, yet he also always retained that underlying clinical edge that one would expect to see in a man who has dedicated his life to scholarship. He reminded me of some of the best teachers I have ever had. I may have had quite a large something in my eye at his death.

 

Anton Lesser, as Luwin's dark mirror Qyburn. Another fantastic performance in a smaller role. I've written elsewhere about my non-reader friends who just know he has to be vivisecting peasants somewhere in the back of those chambers. Lesser manages to convey a great deal about his character through his performance alone, without much in the way of aid from the script and -- most impressively, to my mind -- without ever playing it broad. I suspect it would be all too easy to caricature the mad scientist of Westeros. Lesser underplays it instead, and by doing so makes his character utterly unsettling in just the right way.

 

Tara Fitzgerald's ambivalent and emotionally disturbed Selyse. Her depiction of Selyse's gnawing sense of dread over the course of this season was just spectacular. That grim expression on her face when she told her daughter "You have no idea what people will do" will probably haunt me for years to come.

 

Just generally speaking, I think the casting for this show has been truly extraordinary. There have been very few misfires.

 

[SharonH58]

• Tom Wlaschiha as Jaqen H'ghar.  I cheered when he came back on this season!  A man knows...

[ElizaD]

Kit Harington might get my most improved award. During seasons 1-4 I felt that he was just there, but in 5-6 the writing and acting for Jon started coming together so that he feels more like a person now and not just an actor remembering his lines. Jon doesn't get the witty quips and he's quiet and internal compared to a lot of brash fan favorites like Oberyn and Bronn, but I wouldn't want anyone else to play him now. The battle of the bastards was a great episode for Harington as an actor: he didn't get a lot of dialogue, but I felt that I knew exactly where Jon was emotionally.

Lyanna Mormont doesn't have a lot to do, but they picked the perfect little actress. If Shireen was sweetness personified, Lyanna is a miniature badass with the most withering stares.