This post contains frank discussion of several plot points from Season 8, Episode 1 of Game of Thrones. If you’re not all caught up or would prefer not to be spoiled, now is the time to leave. Seriously, this is your last chance and you won’t have another so get while the getting is good.

Among all the heartwarming reunions, northern makeouts, and steely political machinations of the Season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones, there was a heartbreaking moment for John Bradley’s character, Samwell Tarly. Though the show has occasionally breezed past the awkward alliances between former foes, Sunday’s premiere took its time with Sam’s discovery that Daenerys Targaryen had burned both his dad and his brother alive last season. Sam then took that hurt and used it to turn around and tell Jon Snow the truth about his parentage. But why, exactly, was Sam grieving a father who never liked him and a brother who bullied him? Bradley visited Vanity Fair’s “Still Watching” podcast to explain.

Bradley based his performance off an article he had read awhile back about how if you have a relationship with one parent that is “strained and difficult” and with the other that is warm and loving, you’re likely to grieve more for the parent you didn’t get on with. “It sounds counterintuitive,” he acknowledges, but once that parent has died you’re left to carry so many things that are unresolved. “It’s never going to get any better,” he says. “The pain is never going to get any easier” without any happy memories to cling to.

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Director David Nutter, who has a reputation for eliciting huge emotional responses from his actors, stepped up to Bradley right before he had to perform and said: “This means you’re never going to make it better.” The resulting emotional crumble from Sam came directly from that note.

That explains his reaction to his father, Randyll Tarly, but what about his brother, Dickon? He was nice enough to Jaime Lannister on the battlefield in Season 7, but if you cast your mind back further to Season 6 (and accept that a different actor played Dickon at the time), Sam’s brother was an absolute beast to him. But Bradley says he sees Dickon as a victim of toxic masculinity—that all his bullying was just posturing to impress their domineering father. Both Bradley and Samwell are able to find reserves of compassion for someone like that.

But what really makes the Sam scene so hard to watch, Bradley says, is the cold reaction from Daenerys Targaryen and Jorah Mormont. Perhaps, given that they just met, Daenerys was at a loss as to how to console Sam for what she did to his family. But Bradley points out that she just stands there and that it’s Sam who has to excuse himself from the room. O.K., but what about Ser Jorah? Why did he offer Sam no support? Here, Bradley takes a brave stance that might rile up the fierce Targaryen supporters in the Game of Thrones fandom:

I’d be interested to know what Jorah’s view on Daenerys is now. In Season 2 he tells Daenerys she has a good heart and that’s why she’d be a good leader, and you’re not really seeing that anymore. After all of her experiences and all she’s gone through and all that she’s withstood and the person she is now, she doesn’t seem to have that heart anymore. She seems much more—in that scene especially—she seems psychopathic almost and she seems to have regressed in terms of morality so much that I don’t know what he thinks of her anymore.

In the full interview, which you can hear above, Bradley also touches on his scenes with newly minted fan favorite Bran Stark and what it means to have a nice, bookish boy like Samwell Tarly stand shoulder to shoulder with a more stereotypically heroic type like Jon Snow in the Great War to Come.

More Great Game of Thrones Stories from Vanity Fair

— Episode 1 recap: a magic dragon ride

— What’s up with Cersei?

— Why that Bran and Jaime reunion matters so much

— The emotional story behind director David Nutter’s return

— Plus: 17 Easter eggs, callbacks, and references you might have missed in Episode 1