By now all Game of Thrones fans are aware of the way Varys, the notorious whisperer, was sentenced to die after committing treason. Now the GoT documentary The Last Watch has given fans an intimate look into the casts first reactions to major scenes in the show.
A specific moment from the table read is resonating with fans: Actor Conleth Hill, who plays Lord Varys, looked displeased during his character’s death scene. So much so, fans can’t stop Tweeting the reaction.
As co-star Emilia Clarke, or Daenerys, read through a scene where her character executes Varys, Hill closed his script before she even finished saying her lines. He placed the papers in front of him, leaned back into his seat, and crossed his arms. Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister) and Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth), who was seated beside Hill, comforted him by holding his hand or putting an arm around his shoulder. Clarke was even seen giving a sorry look to her co-star.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Hill said he took Varys’ death “very personally” when he first saw the scripts. Unlike former GoT stars, who were warned of their characters’ deaths before the table read, Hill and his castmates found out about their Season 8 endings from the page alone. “I kept thinking: ‘What did I do wrong?’ There wasn’t any pre-warning,” he said.
Part of you didn’t want it to finish,” he explained. “Part of you is, ‘Oh, that’s very good.’ And part of you is, ‘Oh, that sucks.’ Very, very mixed. Bittersweet. I think it’s really good in retrospect now that I’ve had the time for it to sink in.”
The reaction did not go unnoticed.
This article originally appeared on InStyle Australia.
