The director of the “Game of Thrones” season premiere has no idea why everyone’s causing a fuss over Ed Sheeran
Game of Thrones returned on Sunday night for its seventh season, and not only did Daenerys Targaryen (finally) arrive to Westeros, but Ed Sheeran was seen hanging about the Riverlands as well.
Unlike most other posts about the season premiere of GoT, this *probably* isn’t a spoiler because it’s literally all everyone’s been talking about for the last few days.
In a surprise move for massive Ed Sheeran fan Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were finally able to get the Grammy-winning singer on the show for a single scene alongside Williams. The cameo was light, fun, and even featured a song from the A Song of Ice and Fire books, but unfortunately for Sheeran, reviews of his cameo were *very* mixed and a lot of fans were downright outraged.
Jeremy Podeswa, who directed “Dragonstone” has responded to Sheeran’s cameo and the criticism and frankly, he doesn’t get the backlash.
“It was lovely working with Ed. He is one of the nicest guys in the world, and he really is one of the guys. He’s lovely, he’s a team player, he wants to do a good job, he takes direction, he’s very open,” Podeswa told Variety. “He’s a big fan of the show and he was really excited to be a part of it.
I think his lovely voice was used to great effect and he just has a really nice presence. He blends into the world of the show in a nice way where if you didn’t have all these associations with him and his musical career, nobody would even blink about his presence on the show.”
We definitely agree that the series played up Sheeran’s strengths — he didn’t have to do *much* acting, aside from passing things to Williams and laughing. He also sang “Hands of Gold,” which in the books is about Tyrion Lannister’s affair with Shae, but has now been seen as a foreshadowing of Jaime killing his sister Cersei. The song may mean something, it may not. In true GoT fashion, we’ll have to wait and find out.
And while we don’t necessarily think he blended seamlessly into the GoT world, he’s hardly the first musician to make an appearance — joining Coldplay’s Will Champion, Of Monsters and Men, Mastodon, and Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. Unfortunately though, his global fame definitely helps him stand out in a crowd.
But in all honestly, we don’t entirely get what all the fuss is about. Most people would probably agree to a cameo on GoT if they were offered one so we really can’t blame him for making an appearance. Plus, it’s not Ed’s fault he wasn’t a White Walker as his scene was *always* going to be with Maisie Williams.
In short, we applaud Ed Sheeran’s efforts and we’ll be anxiously waiting to find out if he *actually* survived the scene next week!
