Game Of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau sues manager he claims was a real Littlefinger

When it comes to screwing over clients, you’d think you’d steer clear of the guy who professionally pretends to cut people in half or toss pre-teens out of castle windows. But, hey, to each their own: Deadline reports that Game Of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is suing his former business manager, Jill Littman, for attempting to hold him to a pair of what the lawsuit—which is pretty heated—calls “Sham Documents,” which entitle her to continued commission on his earnings, despite the fact that he fired her in 2015. (Admittedly a pretty hefty stretch of “A Lannister always pays his debts.”)

The conflict goes back a few years, to when Coster-Waldau—then an up-and-coming Danish actor—hired Littman under an oral agreement to serve as his manager, taking the standard 10 percent. When he needed a visa to work in the U.S., though, Littman allegedly convinced him to sign a formal contract, on the grounds that it would make things look more official for the authorities, and supposedly assured him that they were only “sham” documents that she would never try to enforce. In what we can’t help but note is such a Jaime Lannister move, then, Coster-Waldau happily agreed and signed the document without bothering to read it. (And did so again three years later, when the first visa expired.)

But gosh, wouldn’t you know it: the world is just full of Cerseis and Littlefingers, and as soon as the actor indicated that he was parting ways with Littman in 2015, out the contracts came. According to the documents, Coster-Waldau apparently owes Littman a commission on his work through 2018, i.e. pretty much the rest of his time on Game Of Thrones. That’s provoked some heated rhetoric from his legal team, including lines about how “The only real factual dispute in this case is the timing of the Defendants’ dishonesty.” (It’s no “The things I do for love,” but, hey, we’ll take it.)