Did people ever recognize you on the street?

Yes. The question of what happened to the character started becoming part of my daily existence. It came in peaks and troughs. Before a new season starts, you get a spike of people recognizing you and asking, “Where have you been?”

Then there were the memes …

I have to take a portion of the blame for that. Starting right after Season 3, on a weekly basis, I’d get messages asking where the character was, and it seemed to be something that was generating a bit of interest. So I did the “Still rowin’” tweet at the end of Season 4, and it kind of took on a life of its own. After that, I sat back and watched the hilarity unfold. The “Life of Gendry”/“Life of Pi” one always sticks in my mind. The internet can cause untold problems, but the wit — you see something like that, and you’re so thankful for it. It just warms your heart.

Given the length of time Gendry must have been rowing, it morphed into a joke about how jacked his arms must be at this point.

With the amount of nude scenes on “Game of Thrones” anyway, there is a certain level of body-consciousness you find yourself with. Most characters have had some nudity to undertake, and when you see everyone ripped before you, you think, “Ah … maybe I should hit the gym.” In the past they’d give you a bit of a head’s up, and it puts a particular pressure on you. And the character of Gendry, he was always supposed to be a muscular guy. He’s a blacksmith, forging steel, and there’s a certain physique that goes hand in hand with that.

Did you get enough time to hit the gym for Gendry? When did you find out you were coming back?

Eighteen months ago. It’s strange, because it’s been a fairly long process, and I wasn’t expecting to get the call, anyway. I think as the years go on, even if they had planned to bring the character back at some point, you just start getting work elsewhere. This season, they said: “We’ll give you a head’s up. You might have a shirtless scene.” So I thought: “O.K., they’re giving me plenty of time to get in shape. How big do you want me to be?” I did hit the gym to prep, for months, and then there wasn’t a shirtless scene! It was completely unnecessary. It was the first time in my career where I’ve been like, “You’d better put a gratuitous shirtless scene in one of these scripts or I’m going to lose my mind.”