Last week we reported on the return of Joffrey actor Jack Gleeson. The young actor took a break after his death scene in season 4. His colleague and acting veteran Julian Glover lasted a little longer.
The Briton played Grand Maester Pycelle in 31 episodes of Game of Thrones, who hid a bright spirit behind his apparent frailty. But while others would be lucky to have been part of the most successful fantasy series for so long, Glover eventually had enough. He longed for his character death.
Character was completely ignored: Game of Thrones actor Julian Glover wished for character death
Born in 1935, the Brit has an extensive filmography, including his roles as General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back and The Possessed by the Holy Grail
Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
In 2011 he joined the Small Council in Game of Thrones, but towards the end he was bored with his role. In a 2019 interview with IGN, Glover spoke about his urge to leave the series.
I wanted [Staffel 6] not do, because I realized that I was completely ignored as a character […]. Cersei bugged me all the time, and I never came up with a tit-for-tat. So it wasn’t fun to play that. The Pycelle actor was more than happy with the death scene
He then reached out to showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss, telling them he was tired of the character and asking what would become of his character. “Oh no you can’t go”the two would have replied, assuring him that he would get a good death scene.
HBO
Julian Glover as Pycelle
As a reminder, in the season 6 finale, Cersei’s confidante Qyburn arranges for Pycelle to be murdered. He is lured into a room by a child spy under false pretenses, where he is stabbed by several others. Glover was delighted:
That’s exactly the way I wanted to go. The actual death scene itself was so skillfully staged. I was lured into this horrible cell-like, prison-like ambience in the basement, and then the kids came out of the darkness.
But the shoot wasn’t that easy:
The actual execution, of course we had to do it in one take because I was such a mess. The blood came out and got into my beard. […] I was very happy to say goodbye to people at that particular moment.
Pycelle does not survive A Song of Ice and Fire on paper either. In George RR Martin’s novel A Dance with Dragons, Varys kills Pycelle with a crossbow.
Julian Glover continued to work well into old age. As late as 2019 he was seen in the theater and he was a conductor in Todd Field’s drama Tár with Cate Blanchett.