Westeros

Hot on the heels of George R.R. Martin confirming that John Stahl is playing Lord Rickard Karstark, a significant northern lord, we have a bunch of confirmations of some of those smaller roles (though as they say, there are no small roles—only small actors). All of these have leaked over the last weeks, but until now HBO has not given official confirmation. So, here we go:

• Steven Cole plays Kovarro, a Dothraki warrior who’s part of Daenerys’s band of followers. We’re not sure what exactly his role is, but he might be an amalgam of some of Dany’s warriors from the novel. The last we heard from him, he had gone to Dubrovnik one more time to wrap up his filming there; no word if he had scenes left to do in the Belfast sets.
• Samuel Callis is in a role titled only “Gold Cloak”. He spent a good deal of time on horseback, apparently, over the course of six days of shooting. At a guess, he may be chasing after Arya, or possibly he’s an unnamed replacement for Janos Slynt as commander of the City Watch.
• Tony Way is Ser Dontos, who’ll play a significant part in Sansa’s story this season.
• Nicholas Blane is the Spice King. This is a new role, not from the book, but we’re guessing he’s the head of the Ancient Guild of Spicers in Qarth, and so would be a competitor to Xaro Xhoan Daxos.

As George said, all the major roles for this season have been cast, but there’s still a few smaller roles up for grabs that are currently in casting, and there’s some roles (most notably Qhorin Halfhand) where we still don’t know just who has been cast. Stay tuned!