Pilou Asbaek was one of the last actors on “Game of Thrones” to be cast in a major role in Season 6.

As Euron Greyjoy, who terrorized his Iron Islands relatives and schemed his way to become the commander of Cersei’s (Lena Headey) fleet in Kings Landing, he cuts a dangerous figure that’s well-suited for the bloodshed coming our way in the final five episodes.

Cersei has promised to marry Euron if he defeats Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), the Mother of Dragons, now stationed in Winterfell.

As Asbaek tells it in a suite at New York’s Mandarin Hotel, he almost didn’t get the job.

“I was doing a BBC comedy called ‘Stag’ and [the ‘Game of Thrones’ producers] asked me to fly in,” says Asbaek, 37. [“Game of Thrones” showrunners] Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] had seen a Danish show I did called ‘Borgen.’ ” Like millions of people around the world, he was a huge fan of the show. “They thought I could do this crazy character, and I did one scene and I didn’t nail it. I was like, ‘Bye-bye, guys.’ ”

Benioff and Weiss, feeling generous, asked him to take a crack at a second scene, but Asbaek’s agent forgot to give him the lines and he had to improvise. “I ended up kissing the guy I was acting with, to do something out of the blue and then I looked at Dan and David,” Asbaek says. “And from sitting like this” — the actor makes a stone face — “they went” (he smiles). “Because that was the unexpectedness of Euron Greyjoy, that he can do anything.”

It was shortly after filming a decisive scene in “the middle of nowhere” in Northern Ireland that Asbaek realized how “Thrones” impacted his career. “There was some paparazzi taking pics of me, Alfie [Allen, who plays Theon Greyjoy] and Gemma [Whelan, who plays Yara Greyjoy]. And I came home. There were like 300 calls on my phone when I got home,” he says. “And 200 text messages. It changed my life in a way where you love it, you embrace it and you move on. I’m Danish. I’m not allowed to get my head into the sky, even though I want to.”

To say that Greyjoy wears his ambition on his sleeve is an understatement, and the show has positioned him in a plum spot with Cersei, especially with fans anticipating the fall of Winterfell, where the bulk of the cast has joined forces against the Night King. “I think she’s been underestimated a lot,” says Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister. “She seems to be outmaneuvering everyone all the time.”

With everyone outguessing each other about the series’ outcome, Asbaek reports there’s been no pressure from family or friends to spill the beans about who ends up sitting on the Iron Throne. “My wife, she’s like, ‘You know, I really don’t want to hear about your job.’ So we don’t discuss it,” he says. “And my parents have a gallery so we talk more about art than my work.”

This level of indifference will seem incomprehensible to diehard fans, but six months after completing production on “GoT,” Asbaek claims “the magic kind of disappears” once you are inside Westeros. “You love magic and all of a sudden you see how these magicians do the trick. Now I know how they made a dragon.”

Fame, too, is overrated. “It’s boring. I thought it would be free dinners and alcohol,” he says. “You might be able to skip a line at the airport.”