Sean Bean names his greatest-ever death scene: “I’d prefer to stay alive now”
I was late to the Game of Thrones madness, and, realising that I had completely missed the boat and would have to rapidly play catch-up just to be on time with the release schedule, I decided to wait and let the dust settle before consuming the much-talked-about series at my own pace.
When I told one of my friends that this was my intention, he gave me one swift piece of advice, ‘Don’t get attached to any of the characters’, and a few months later, when I had completed the Middle Earth epic, I realised that it was sage advice given the freedom with which writer George RR Martin decided to kill off his primary characters.
Up until the very last series, which was a hastily hashed together mess that turned the gripping series into an inflated Avengers-style action, all of those deaths felt somewhat appropriate for the plotlines. It was prolific, yes, but gripping every time, as it allowed this merry-go-round of power grabs to keep on spinning right up until the end, when, spoiler alert, Bran the Broken finally assumed power of Westeros.
Joffrey Baratheon’s poisoning, Ramsay Bolton being fed to his dogs, Arya Stark’s revenge on Walder Frey, Tywin Lannister’s humiliating toilet-based death and the tragic, yet psychedelic sacrifice of Hodor all played into the show’s charming and unrelenting murders, but by the time I got to the point of all of those, I was somewhat anaesthetised, given the fact that one of the main characters of the first series, Ned Stark, was brutally beheaded at the end of the first series.
Given the somewhat mystical element of the show, I refused to believe that it was for the honourable Lord of Winterfell and thought by some twist of witchcraft, his head would be sewn back on and he would continue his role as the show’s humble hero, but, the cautionary wisdom of my friend quickly rung in my ear and I realised, that it was for Stark and I better get used to it.
But there was something extra painful about Stark’s death, despite it occurring at the very beginning, because Sean Bean, who played him, was a mainstay in Middle Earth cinema for me and having watched him die an equally honourable death as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings, I quickly spiralled into a state of cinematic trauma.
It was a trauma Bean was acutely aware would be inflicted on viewers like me, given the nobility of each character and has now thankfully promised to rid us Middle Earth fans of any future pain.
He explained, “When I first met the Game of Thrones writers, they told me: ‘You die, but you’re in it for nearly the full season’. But he was a great character, and it was a good death, so I didn’t mind. Boromir’s [in The Lord of the Rings] was probably the best death I’ve ever done. It was just so heroic and tragic. I did get a reputation for dying on screen, but I’d prefer to stay alive now, if you don’t mind.”
I imagine when Bean got to the final series of Game of Thrones, he was probably glad that his character went out with honour early doors, because while he’d prefer his characters to stay alive on screen, the storyline was so excruciatingly bad come the end of it, that an eternity of beheadedness probably seemed more appealing.
