With all things Game of Thrones on lockdown (even the Mother of Dragons doesn’t have free rein around the set), we’ll take whatever details we can get. We know there’s a battle, the biggest in the show’s history, that took 55 nights to film; we know the season will begin in an unexpected location; we know Gendry will have an expanded role; and now we know that the eighth and final season will be more improvisational than previous seasons. Wait, what?
According to Watchers on the Wall, the casting department is looking for five new characters in an “improv-heavy scene all about haggling over land.” That’s a curious need for a show as tightly scripted as Thrones, especially when paired with the previously announced desire for a “young mother” with “a naturalistic style, and improvisation skills.” The other new characters: a “strapping” soldier; a village girl who will be “attacked by a man in a physically intense scene for which the actress, aged 18-25, will have to go naked above-the-waist”; and “a clean-shaven grieving man” for a “highly emotional scene.”
A soldier, a sad man, and a half-naked woman? Thrones gonna Thrones.
For that last part, the show is searching for “someone who won’t go over-the-top,” so Sylvester Stallone is probably out of the running. To date, the only named character from the books who was added to the show’s final season is Golden Company commandeer Harry Strickland, played by Marc Rissmann.
Cersei is very excited for his arrival. Game of Thrones returns in 2019.
(Via Watchers on the Wall)