Monday 30 April 2018

It was proper star treatment for my trip to Belfast. All the flights are arranged and you’re sitting in the VIP waiting room in the airport, before a driver picks you up at Belfast airport. When I was in that car it suddenly started to hit me. You drive up to those studios, this huge, sprawling complex in hangar-sized buildings. And once I’m inside I see King’s Landing. Oh. My. God.

On film and television sets actors are never allowed to walk around on their own. They will always have a runner or production assistant who will take them from point A to point B, even if Point A is the green room and point B is the toilet 30 seconds away. It’s not because they don’t trust us – they trust us to get completely lost and go the wrong way at any possible opportunity! My sense of direction is shocking. If there’s a choice of left and right I will get it wrong a lot more than 50 per cent of the time.

As soon as the driver drops me off I manage to go the wrong way. It’s really sunny and there are Dothraki walking around and these insane sets, props and costumes are everywhere. So I’m just trying to walk in the right direction. The first cock-up I make is when I walk into a room and there’s a production assistant sitting at a desk with papers and I think I’ve found where I need to be. There’s lots of costumes and I’m here for a fitting. So I say, “Hi.” The guy behind the desk says, “Can I help you?” and I explain I’m here for the fitting. He asks me when my call time was and to be honest I don’t know, I explain that the driver just dropped me off. He looks at his watch and is a bit flustered, then this young girl runs up and whispers in his ear. He says, “Are you background?” and I say, “No. Well I hope not!” [Laughs] He says, “Are you Toby Osmond? I’m so sorry Mr Osmond!” In my best British accent I say, “That’s fine” and he explains this is the background room, so I stop filling out the form I’ve been handed. I thought it was a bit too detailed!

When they take me through to the room to get the fitting done there’s a camera in there shooting a behind-the-scenes piece. So I may well have engineered it so I’m in that bit of the documentary. But the costume guy was fabulous. The first thing they put on was this beautiful, gold-embroidered robe and that’s what you’ll see in the episode. Despite my meandering it was quite quick in and out but I remember walking past a clothing rack in that area and I can’t remember whether it said ‘Tyrion’ or ‘Peter Dinklage’ but that was me thinking, “I’m here! This is really it!” Done. Tick. What else is there? Only Star Wars!