If you haven’t heard about it literally everywhere, Ed Sheeran had a brief cameo on the Game Of Thrones Season 7 premiere, “Dragonstone,” to the pleasant surprise of some or to the dismay of others. You can count Maisie Williams (who plays Ayra) among the first group; she’s a big fan of Sheeran, and his cameo was a surprise gift to her.
Even though Game of Thrones has had musician cameos many times in the past (Sigur Ros, Coldplay, Mastodon, Of Monsters And Men, Snow Patrol), the reaction to Sheeran’s cameo seemed uncharacteristically negative. The “Castle on the Hill” singer deactivated his Twitter account shortly after the episode, leading to speculation about his reasons and a defense from “Dragonstone” director Jeremy Podeswa. Earlier this month, Sheeran mentioned his intention to quit using Twitter because “there’s nothing but people saying mean things,” but how many of us have said we’d quit social media and never have? The timing for when Sheeran made good on his intention to quit sparked rumors.
Sheeran, who is still using Instagram and Facebook, took to the former on Wednesday to explain that his choice to deactivate his Twitter had nothing to do with Game of Thrones:
“Last I’ll say on this. I came off Twitter Coz I was always intending to come off Twitter, had nothing to do with what people said about my game of thrones cameo, because I am in game of thrones, why the hell would I worry what people thought about that. It’s clearly f*ckin’ awesome. Timing was just a coincidence, but believe what you want.”
Sheeran’s Twitter account has already been reactivated, although it now comes with the message, “I don’t use this anymore, please follow me on [Instagram].” All of his tweets before April 15, 2015 have been removed, and he has significantly fewer followers. Before he deactivated his account, he had over 19 million followers; now he’s down to only 14 million. Must be rough.
Even if his choice to temporarily deactivate his account was only coincidentally overlapping with online kvetching about his Game of Thrones cameo, it’s fortuitous that he chose that time to block out some of the crazier responses. If anyone is truly angry Ed Sheeran was on the show as a surprise for Maisie Williams, we’ll let that reaction be summed up by comedian Ron Funches:
https://twitter.com/RonFunches/status/886824381674115072
(Via Ed Sheeran and ONTD)
