Game of Thrones star Conleth Hill got candid about the show’s controversial ending in a new interview published last week. Hill told The Times U.K. that he was “inconsolable” when he learned how his character, Lord Varys, would end his time in Westeros. He said that he was “frustrated” by the writing in the last few seasons, especially where it wasn’t true to his characterization.
“I thought I’d done something wrong,” Hill said. “Right up until the last two series, I had no complaints at all. I just felt frustrated with the last couple of series because Varys wasn’t the all-knowing character he had been. I think the writers wanted to do one thing to end it and the studio HBO wanted to do another. I felt that last series was a bit rushed. I was inconsolable, but now I’m fine about it.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
Hill also said that he is not recognized by strangers very much for Game of Thrones, which makes some sense since he wore elaborate costumes and makeup at times. In real life, Hill has a full head of hair, unlike the conniving advisor Lord Varys, a.k.a. “The Spider.” Fans have long speculated that Hill particularly disliked the ending and was more willing to criticize it publicly than other cast members. Some shots of him behind the scenes or at press events have even become memes within the online fandom.
Hill is not the first to suggest that the writers and the studio wanted to go in different directions. In 2018, author George R.R. Martin told Entertainment Tonight that both he and HBO wanted the show to go on longer. Last year, he confirmed that it was showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss who chose to end the show abruptly with two shortened seasons.
“[Benioff and Weiss] for years were saying they wanted to wrap it up in seven seasons,” Martin told The New York Times. “Well, seven became eight because the eighth season is really the second half of the seventh season – it’s kind of one long season. But I never felt that seven or eight seasons was enough. I campaigned for 10 seasons, and we could have gone to 12. There’s enough material – and there certanily will be enough material once I finish these last two books – to sustain 12 seasons. But I lost the battle and we went with eight.”
“I think one of the big complaints about those last seasons is not only what happened – although there are complaints about that – but also that it happened too suddenly, and it was not set up. And if we had 10 seasons or 12 seasons, I think that would have worked better,” Martin added.
Martin intends to finish his book series with a slightly different ending than the TV show, which is inevitable since the show left out so many vital characters and side plots. As the plot in the books stands now, even Lord Varys is in a very different place from the version Hill played on the screen. Martin has given some promising updates on his progress with the next book, but so far there is no hint of a release date on the horizon.
