BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND—Shedding light on the difficult process of believably portraying the Game Of Thrones villain the Night King, actor Vladimir Furdik opened up to reporters Monday about the creative challenge of playing a character with absolutely no purpose whatsoever. “The Night King was a very demanding role because all my character did was just sort of stand there, so it’s on you as the actor to sell his emotions and make up for the fact that he had no narrative function,” said Furdik, explaining that in order to really get into the Night King’s mindset, he focused on thinking about ice all day long, a strategy he developed after reading all of George R.R. Martin’s books, which provided him with no additional information on how his character actually felt or fit into the series as a whole. “I kept asking David Benioff and D.B. Weiss if the Night King was going to have any meaningful impact on the story, but they kept dodging the question and telling me to “look evil.” The scene where my character killed one of the dragons was pretty cool, and I enjoyed getting to flex my acting muscles by pretending to throw a spear. Beyond that, though, all I really did was show up to set in costume. It’s tough when your character has no arc, personality, or reason to exist.” Furdik also thanked the cast mates who played Samwell Tarly and Ser Podrick Payne for understanding first-hand the struggle of portraying characters that also had no effect on the series’ ultimate conclusion.

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