As Game of Thrones fans grow ever-impatient for HBO to reveal the date of the season seven premiere, any tidbit pertaining to the upcoming episodes becomes big news. Today’s nugget comes courtesy of new cast member and veteran actor Jim Broadbent, who revealed a bit about the character he’ll be playing — and we have a good guess of who it is.
Image: Grant Pollard/Invision/AP
Of course, under penalty of beheading by an elaborate sword of Valyrian steel, the Oscar winner couldn’t divulge much. Here’s what he told ScreenCrush:
I’m a maester, an archmaester. I’m an old professor character.
He also said: 1) His character has “sort of one major scene” in five of the season’s seven episodes; 2) his character appears in scenes with Sam Tarly; and 3) he did all of his filming in a Belfast studio, and wasn’t involved with in any CG special effects or location shooting.
So — as ScreenCrush deduced, and we have to agree, Broadbent is probably playing Citadel resident Maester Marwyn, also known as Marwyn the Mage. In the books, Marwyn is mentioned as being an expert in human anatomy (he trained the witch Mirri Maz Duur in it) and the only maester who believes in ghosts and dragons. In A Feast for Crows, he learns about Daenerys Targaryn and her dragons from Sam, and then quickly sets sail to meet her.
Of course, if this is the character Broadbent is playing, his role could change significantly from the books — but it’s clever casting, and given Broadbent’s previously-seen ability to bring a mix of gravitas and goofiness to supernatural stories (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Chronicles of Narnia, and so on), it sounds like a perfect fit.