Isaac Hempstead-Wright may be only 11 when he started his acting career in his breakout role as Bran Stark in the HBO TV series ‘Game of Thrones’. Six years later, the 17-year-old actor is ‘still enjoying the crazy journey’ of being part of the hit fantasy drama.
The English actor was in town earlier this April to promote the widely-popular series, and made an appearance at the Game of Thrones Experience: Worlds of Westeros event at ION Orchard. He returns to the sixth season after a year of absence due to his examinations in school.
(Read our experience at the Game Of Thrones: World of Westeros event!)
“It’s been sort of surreal," said Wright at a media roundtable at Grand Hyatt Singapore. "When I started, I was so young! And when you’re that age, you've never really paused and thought about the total absurdity all around the place. It didn’t dawn upon me then, but I’ve been really lucky. I’ve enjoyed the crazy journey that it has been."
Die-hard fans have watched Wright grow… literally - from an adorable little boy to a handsome young man of the Stark family. For Wright, playing a character like Bran Stark plays a huge part in his growing years, and admits that he relates a lot to his character. “I think there are a couple of moments where Bran makes impulsive decisions without rethinking about them, but (in general) I find that I relate a lot to Bran’s decisions.”
“I think Bran Stark is one of the characters, in fact, pretty much all the characters in Game Of Thrones where they face an extreme hardship. He always wanted to be a knight but got chucked out of a window and becomes paralysed; had his family murdered; his home is burnt down; and then he is taken to a very different part of the North with two people he just met… so for Bran, he is really a symbol of struggling through hardship and not taking it for granted because has not been easy for him.
But I think one of the other things is the fact that he could be at a stage and not feeling what he has… so i guess I see that as a metaphor for really just pursuing just exactly what you feel you should,” he added.
The book-to-TV adaptation has been very well-received internationally, gaining a legion of fans and supporters throughout the years. It was even reported in 2015 that it was the highest illegally-downloaded title with 32 million downloads. However, being one of the most famous TV series have its downsides: fans have lamented on the number of shocking and unexpected deaths of beloved characters.
“The first thing anyone does when they get their scripts is ‘forget the story, am I alive?,” he joked, recalling the time he thought he was axed from the show.
“They always say it’s kind of like the mafia (treatment), you always get a nice bottle of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers before you get the script. So when it was season 5 and I got a call from my agent in the morning and said David and Dan wanted to speak to me. I went to school the whole day and thought I was going to die. They called me at the end of the day and I was waiting for the bad news, but when they said I was just going to miss out on this season, I said: ’Oh! That’s fine! That’s fine by me!’”
Wright is tight-lipped as to what unfolds in the new season, or the fates of the remaining characters, but when asked if he could choose a way for Bran Stark to die, he answered like a true Game Of Thrones fan would say - “a gruesome death’.
“I would love a really gruesome death, because then you get all the cool prosthetics… you get a decapitated head to take home,” he jokes, adding: “But it’s quite hard to top the the deaths that had happened.”
The Emmy®- and Golden Globe-winning GAME OF THRONES returns for its ten-episode sixth season in Asia the same time as the US – exclusively on HBO this April 25 at 9am, with a same day encore at 9pm, with new episodes every Monday at the same time.