If we can’t trust the German tabloid website Bild, then who can we trust? Look, we knew it was a longshot that Game of Thrones was going to land a serious TV superstar like Dame Angela Lansbury for season seven, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t wish it into reality. After all, if we’re this close to seeing Vin Diesel in the ring at WrestleMania, then what’s to say we can’t shower a 90-year-old actress with enough love to make her want to appear in two episodes of a show about dragons and undead snow zombies?
Alas, here comes Entertainment Weekly with the buzzkill, writing:
This is not accurate, the actress’ team told EW on Wednesday.
The rumor began over Labor Day weekend. The original source was a German website for tabloid newspaper Bild, which is described on Wikipedia as “notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism.”
And yet, despite the source, the idea of Lansbury on the show seemed credible to many.
I don’t know if I’d say “credible,” at least in regard to my own stellar rumor-mongering, but this is Game of Thrones we’re talking about. The show that incites more theories and rumors than any other show on television, so when an actor like Jim Broadbent joins the party and then some German website publishes six sentences of sourceless material about a beloved actress like Lansbury also being spotted on the set, we’re allowed to get excited about that, if only for the joy of having new Game of Thrones rumors to “report.”
But now the Lansbury dream is dead. Gone are our hopes that she’d play Daenerys Targaryen 60 years in the future, looking back on the fun she had storming King’s Landing with her dragons. Maybe sharing a glass of lemonade with her dear friend Jon Snow, as they laugh about the time Rhaegal accidentally ate Tyrion Lannister. Now, that would be a wacky Bran Stark vision.
