Westeros

One of the people I met when I visited Belfast was John Bradley, the actor playing Samwell Tarly. He was one of the actors we had discovered had been cast via a mention out in the wilds of the web (in fact, it was the website of his drama school), and then somewhere along the way he was on Twitter and was just rather hilarious with his acerbic, self-effacing observations. I remember asking him at Belfast if he was really like that in “real life”, after noticing that he seemed rather reserved at the party, and he admitted that Twitter was sort of a “release valve.”

Since graduating drama school, he’s landed a quick one-two punch of notable roles: not just Samwell, but also Giovanni de Medici in Canal+‘s Borgia. Below, you can read about his education as an actor, his views on how to approach a character, his particular talents, and what happened when he had his callback audition and was reduced to a pale, sweating mess after the train failed to run on time…