For eight seasons, HBO's Game of Thrones marked a very special cultural chapter for fans of peak TV and high fantasy. Author George R.R. Martin’s rich and still unfinished landscape came to life through this massive hit, and it was partially thanks to actors like Aidan Gillen.
That experience came with a bunch of pros and cons, and plenty of loyalty to the mission of adapting the A Song of Ice and Fire book saga the best way possible. Even four years after the controversial Season 8 finale to that mammoth undertaking, that loyalty is strong, thanks to the Irish actor revealing he's still keeping secrets from those days, and we totally need him to spill at once.
Fittingly enough, this bombshell came as I interviewed Gillen for his role in the recent film Barber, which is currently in theaters and on VOD. After all, you don’t get the man who played Petyr “LIttlefinger” Baelish into a room without at least broaching the subject of this long-running drama of dragons. As he summed up what he missed about Game of Thrones, Aidan Gillen shared this tease with CinemaBlend:
It was like doing a small, intimate job, you know what I mean, with people. And you got to know people, really good actors, very well. So I miss that aspect of it. I’m happy that they let me really help create the character. You know, every TV producer wouldn't do that. Let you have as much control and say over a look, how you sound, how you act, how you do everything. But I've always been a believer in just creating tiny, tiny moments. And at the end of, you know, a hundred of them, people will have an idea of what you're about, maybe. And I've kept a lot of secrets still.
I’m sorry, Mr. Gillen, but one doesn’t simply drop that sort of knowledge without having some sort of plan to start sharing said secrets. Because of making such a remark in passing, I simultaneously respect and resent the secrecy that Aidan Gillen has maintained all this time. Especially if any of that information has any bearing on how and why Game of Thrones ended.
It’s definitely a test of strength and courage, but at the same time, what harm could there be from spilling some of those secrets now? Unless, of course, there’s something that The Wire vet is hiding that pertains to upcoming Game of Thrones series. In which case I’m still a bit miffed, but I understand the code of secrecy.
Besides being tempted by such cryptic remarks from the HBO landmark hit’s Master of Coin, I was also treated to the aspects that The Wire veteran missed from his time on Game of Thrones. Aiden Gillen also shared what he doesn't miss as well, painting a beautiful portrait of nostalgia that reads thusly:
I love it. As an experience. It lasted, it was over a seven, eight year period or something. You weren't there all the time. No one was there all the time, but it was so well made that it looks like that world was so well created. It looks like everyone was there all the time. I was doing a lot of other things while we were shooting that. And there's not much, there's nothing really I miss about it. Any cold weather stuff or, you know, that you hear people going on about being stuck in forests in Northern Ireland or whatever. No issues there. What I miss is that … even though that was made on a massive scale, it was about detail. It was about tiny pieces, jigsaw pieces, and every director that was there, every writer, they all knew that. And that's what we were working on.
Aidan Gillen has been mixing it up as of late, thanks to taking on the role of a heroic private detective in his new film Barber. On the trail of a missing girl’s whereabouts, his sleuth protagonist Valentine “Val” Barber encounters a labyrinth of underworld ties and half-truths that would feel right at home in Westeros, with the big twist that Gillen is one of the people we’re rooting for in the face of absolute danger.
Of course, streamers with a Paramount+ subscription would also know the man as a big bad in the series Mayor of Kingstown. As Aiden Gillen helped shape his character in its development, this return to villainy seems to have given him as much latitude to help flesh things out as he’d experienced with the world of Thrones.
While there are still secrets to be discovered in the world of Game of Thrones, there’s a chance that maybe, someday, Aidan Gillen will share those hidden facts. But if you’re interested in seeing him play for the side of good for a change, you should see Barber, which is in theaters and available for rental through Amazon, as well as most other major digital entertainment providers.
