Or, at least, the actor portraying Podrick Payne is interviewed. Access Hollywood talked with Daniel Portman about his role as Tyrion’s shy, tongue-tied young squire, touching on the character’s background, his own familiarity with the novels, and his weightlifting regiment (or, rather, lack of it) to get into the part.

Portman notes he’s quite different from the character in the novel, in his personal life, but he seems to have aimed to capture a lot of it in his performance. Yes, Podrick’s a bit older for the TV series, but otherwise, it’s sounding pretty good. We’re certainly looking forward to seeing his performance, and we’ve hopes that some of his best parts in A Clash of Kings will make it through.

Redeye Chicago has a long interview with Natalie Dormer about her roles in The Fades,  Madonna’s W.E., and (of course) HBO’s Game of Thrones, where she plays the role of Margaery Tyrell.

The Game of Thrones questions start on page 3, where Dormer proves to be quite coy about her character and her role in the story. However, she does say this:

Not to say that the thirrd season is a go, but that at least pins down their views as to when Dormer’s likely to be doing the bulk of her work if a third season is commissioned by HBO… and given the numbers it’s starting to feel like less of a question of “if” and more of a question of “when” and “how many”, if there’s the chance that HBO will commit to a two-season order this next go-around.

EW’s Spoiler Room provides some new information regarding season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, thanks to Alfie Allen, who plays Theon GreyjoyTheon Greyjoy. Getting a chance to chat with him at the SAG Awards, this is what he had to say about what he got to do, who he loved working with, and what his favorite episode is. Mild spoilers, if you really don’t want to know anything about the story lines or new characters for season 2!

To quote:

That’s what Kit Harington teased to MTV’s Kara Warner at the SAG red carpet.  You can watch the video (US only) of the discussion below:

A write-up of the interview can be found at MTV’s site, for those who can’t see the video.

Thanks to Cunningham’s hint followed by Jolie Lash’s prompting, we now know what Cunningham was doing yesterday—getting interviewed by Access Hollywood about his role as Ser Davos Seaworth! In fact, there’s an excellent video interview with the actor (who’s awfully charming, if I may say so) as well, which covers the same material

Hopefully no one will seriously take issue with their changing the hand from which Davos’s is lacking a few joints!

This is almost the most we’ve heard from any of the new cast members, and it’s certainly interesting. In this interview with Blackfilm, actor Nonso Anozie—cast in the role of Xaro Xhoan Daxos—spills some details about his role, his familiarity with the books, and his experience working on the show

Another day, another guild award nomination! This time, according to Deadline Hollywood, the Costumer Designers Guild has announced its nominees, and Game of Thrones‘s Michele Clapton is included in the Outstanding Period/Fantasy Television category. We suspect there’ll be stiff competition from Showtime’s The Borgias (costumes by Gabriella Pescucci) and fellow HBO show Boardwalk Empire (John A. Dunn, Lisa Padovani), to say the least.

We’ve updated our gallery with images from the last two videos, with the usual commentary drawing from the books and from other, relevant information. But in the course of watching the Croatia video, a new bit of information slipped out.

To the right you can see director Alan Taylor, who directed “Baelor” and “Fire and Blood”, and whom we recently confirmed was directing four of the ten episodes…

... and something new: he’s now a co-executive producer on Game of Thrones!

An interesting revelation. This puts him on the same footing as GRRM, as far as “official” credits go, and suggests two things to us: if there are further seasons, he’s going to be leaving a major mark as a director in them (bearing in mind that he’ll certainly be busy this summer, when shooting on Thor 2 starts), and that he’ll have a good deal of input on the directiorial aspects of the show. His extensive experience as a director should be a boon for the production.

Two new brief interviews have been published with George R.R. Martin regarding HBO’s Game of Thrones series, looking at his view on the show as an old hand at Hollywood television and as the creator of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series on which its based. The first of the two pieces came from the LA Times blog, Hero Complex, in which GRRM discusses his concern for how viewers will treat the second season after a major character leaves the show, drawing on experience on “Beauty and the Beast” where the controversial departure of Linda Hamilton mortally wounded the show.

The other article, posted today, is a brief interview with THR’s Live Feed blog. He notes that fantasy has been around for thousands of years, but it’s been treated as material exclusively for children in the modern era until relatively recently. Asked about how season 2 will compare to his novel, A Clash of Kings, he says:

And he did it again: Peter Dinklage took home the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Tyrion Lannister , which certainly made up for any sadness over Game of Thrones losing out to the (exceptional) Homeland for Best TV Drama.

Thanking George R.R. Martin, executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, and more, Dinklage finished his acceptance speech by noting he was thinking of Martin Henderson, whom he suggested viewers Google; Henderson is a dwarf in Britain who received serious injuries when he was attacked in apparent “dwarf tossing” incident.

Here’s Dinklage’s acceptance speech below:

As George himself noted at “Not a Blog”, Game of Thrones scored a prestigious honor when the American Film Institute announced its list of ten film and ten television programs that had shown their excellence in the prior year, naming HBO’s hit fantasy drama among many other noteworthy programs selected by AFI’s jury. Yesterday was the AFI Awards luncheon where the various honorees received certificates ... and guess who showed up to receive them?

Jason Momoa, Emilia Clarke, and George R.R. Martin.

GRRM is indeed over in LA, and he’ll be in the audience for the Golden Globes along with David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Peter Dinklage as Game of Thrones battles for Best Television Drama and Dinklage sees if he can repeat his Emmy victory for Best Supporting Actor at the Globes. Will he manage it? Ken Tucker at EW thinks so, as does Tim Goodman at The Hollywood Reporter (who also thinks Thrones should take the television prize).

Below is the AFI’s video revealing their award honorees:

Yesterday, we shared a (very spoilery) interview with actor Tom Wlaschiha, a new addition to the series who’ll be playing the role of the mysterious Jaqen H’ghar. Well… he’s supposed to be mysterious, but Wlaschiha really does reveal quite a lot about the character, so if you’re unfamiliar with A Clash of Kings, don’t read it!

Next up, Nonso Anozie—the actor cast in the role of Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who plays a central role in Daenerys’s season 2 storyline—is caught at the red carpet for his latest film, The Grey, and speaks about his role a bit in a rather less spoilery way.

That list of award nominations? May be getting to be two arms long, rather than just one, now that the Directors Guild has announced its nominations for achievement in television direction. And… you guessed it, HBO’s Game of Thrones makes that list too.

In this case, it’s veteran director Tim van Patten getting acknowledged for his excellent work in directing the first episode of the series, “Winter is Coming”. Here’s the write-up the DGA nomination provides for the director:

His competition? Michael Cuesta for the pilot of Homeland, Vince Gilligan for Breaking Bad‘s “Face Off”, Patty Jenkins for the pilot of The Killing (which, despite all the problems that developed as the show barreled to the end, was a beautifully directed episode, in my opinion), and Michael Waxman for Friday Night Lights‘s “Always”.

Van Patten’s extensive prior record with the DGA, while all the others are first-time nominees, may make it seem like he’d be the favorite. And, who knows, maybe he is. But all the other directors are absolutely worthy, so it seems to us that the award could be anyone’s this season. Still, we’ll be partisan and cheer on Van Patten and Game of Thrones.

According to Ireland’s RTE, the Irish Film & Television Awards nominees have been announced, and HBO’s Game of Thrones—predominantly shot in Northern Ireland last year—has scored five nominations. The awards are given to Irish-born, Irish citizens, or full-time Irish residents. Here’s the list:

• Best Drama: Game of Thrones (Mark Huffam & Generator Entertainment)
• Director, Television Drama: Brian Kirk (directed “Lord Snow”, “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things”, and “The Wolf and the Lion”)
• Actress in a Lead Television Role : Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark)
• Actor in a Supporting Television Role: Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger; Gillen is also nominated in a lead role for Love/Hate)
• Sound: Ronan Hill & Sound Post Production Team (Generator Entertainment)

The awards will be presented on February 12 in Dublin.

UPDATE: HBO has confirmed the breakdown of directors below.

This one’s for those who are interested in some of the minutia of the production. We’ve previously tried to piece together which directors were directing each episode, and we had about half of them figured out after some speculation. The last pieces of the puzzle seem likely to have fallen into place, if this CV from an actor on the show - Darren Killeen, credited as “Baratheon Guard”—is anything to go by.

In it, he lists his experience on the show as covering episodes 3 and 5, and Alik Sakharov (first season cinematographer) and David Petrarca as the directors. Assuming that they’re listed in the correct order (and we believe they are, because we know for a fact that Petrarca directed episode 4, and it’s common for directors to get continguous episode blocks to work on), here’s who we think are directing the ten episodes of the second season of Game of Thrones: