Game Of Thrones' Conleth Hill thought the writers were mad at him when he read his death scene

For the whole run of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, Conleth Hill’s Varys was arguably the secret protagonist—an argument he laid out himself in the first season when he explained to Ned Stark that he didn’t work for any of the various factions in Westeros, he simply worked for “the realm” itself. But when it was time for the show to end, Hill was taken aback by how abrupt and seemingly inconsequential his death ultimately was. For those who don’t recall, Varys died early on in the penultimate episode of the series, getting roasted by a dragon in a scene that is almost entirely in the dark, with all of his careful plotting and scheming essentially amounting to nothing.

Now, many years later, Hill has admitted to The Times UK (via Variety) that he was “inconsolable” when he found out how his character was being killed off, saying he started to feel “frustrated” with the final two seasons because Varys had stopped feeling like the same character. He even said that he thought he must’ve “done something wrong” to suddenly be treated like that by the show, as if the writers or producers were mad at him. But he thinks it just came down to the fact that “the writers wanted to do one thing to end it and the studio HBO wanted to do another,” so the last season “was a bit rushed.” Either way, he’s “fine about it” now.

But even if that’s true now, he definitely wasn’t fine at the time. There’s behind-the-scenes footage of Hill reading his death scene with the cast, and as soon as he says his final line—before the scene is even done—he gets rid of his script and starts rocking in his chair, with Emilia Clarke and Gwendoline Christie looking on sympathetically as Lena Headey grabs his hand. It’s a bummer! Being an actor seems like a bummer!