Forums: Index > Watercooler > Questions for Kristian Nairn & Natalia Tena
Hi, everyone. We're looking for some questions from YOU for Kristian Nairn (Hodor) and Natalia Tena (Osha) to ask during Wikia's Game of Thrones panel at New York Comic Con. Please let us know if you have anything you would like to ask them! Thanks.
--Brian 19:02, September 19, 2014 (UTC)
Well, I suppose I will re-submit the questions I came up with for C2E2. Adam said he wasn't able to ask any of them: http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Brian_Linder/Post_Your_Questions_for_Hodor_Actor_Kristian_Nairn
- Where were your scenes beyond the Wall filmed this season? Did you need to travel to Iceland, as the Night's Watch characters did when they went beyond the Wall?
- Now that Hodor is north of the Wall, he will have to fight wights and other monsters. For the first time you might have to "do your own stunts" as they say. When fighting wights, are you interacting with an actor in heavy makeup, or do you have to pretend and they add the CGI later?
- Is Hodor upset that Bran wargs into him? In the books and TV show (so far) he's mostly done it to survive (in the books, he warged into Hodor to show the right way out of Winterfell and escape, in the TV show, to help Jon Snow fight off the wildlings so they could all escape). In the books, they later say that it's not so much that wildling wargs "cannot" enter the minds of humans, but that they will not: it is considered an abomination. So it's sort of a mix of both: it's very difficult, plus no one even tries to do it (and thus never practice and get better at it).
- Can you confirm that Old Nan died "off screen" between Season 1 and Season 2? She was Hodor's only living relative (his great-grandmother), but actress Margaret John died before Season 1 began airing (though her scenes were all finished). We sort of assumed that Benioff and Weiss decided to retire the character out of respect, and just assume that she peacefully died...which is probably for the best, because in the books, when Ramsay Snow burned Winterfell he took many of the women captive and took them back to the Dreadfort - where he has been hunting them for sport and making cloaks out of their flayed skins. Old Nan is still listed as a prisoner at the Dreadfort in the books. ---- Anyway, I did notice the sadness in Hodor's voice in "The Rains of Castamere" when Bran mentioned Old Nan's stories, which I assumed was a nod to the fact that his last living relative died and he was saddened at the mention of her.
- You have mentioned in past interviews that despite playing a character who can only say one word, you supplement this with putting a lot of thought into your body language, which you are skilled at reading because you were partially deaf as a child. What was it like being partially deaf? What are things about body language you notice that other people might normally overlook? You said you were later "fixed", but how? If you have a cochlear implant do you need to take it off before playing Hodor on-screen or does it fit under a wig?
- Have you heard of the popular fan theory that Hodor may be a descendant of Ser Duncan the Tall, legendary commander of the Kingsguard? The Season 4 premiere actually made it a point to mention Ser Duncan. He's one of the two lead characters in the "Tales of Dunk and Egg" prequel novellas - which HBO is considering adapting into a TV project after the main series ends. Basically, there have been three "Dunk and Egg" prequel novellas, and the delayed fourth one will see Ser Duncan visit Winterfell. During one of Bran's greensight visions with a weirwood in the books (like in episode 2 of Season 4), he sees a very tall knight, as tall as Hodor, kneeling down to kiss a young maiden in the Winterfell godswood -- the theory is that this might have been Old Nan when she was young, and that Ser Duncan is actually Hodor's great-grandfather. There are also strong hints that Ser Duncan is also Brienne of Tarth's great-grandfather too -- apart from their large size, there's a line in the books where Brienne makes passing mention of the heraldry on an old shield in the armory at Tarth, and she actually describes the personal heraldry on Ser Duncan's shield. This would make Hodor and Brienne second cousins.
- The tattoo on your right temple is stylish, but did the makeup people get annoyed about it when you came into the role (as Hodor doesn't have a tattoo)? Or was it really not an issue, just a shrug of the shoulders, and they said "hey, we'll just put a fake scar over your right temple to cover the tattoo" -- how do you think Hodor got that scar in the TV continuity?
- You said in a recent interview that you don't really think you'd get married, and you've always chased after unattainable people, and then as soon as the chase ended the novelty wore off. Don't you think you'll ever settle down? As Bronn would say, if you keep chasing after some idealized perfection you'll only find yourself lonely. No man is an island. Do you think relationships need a solid basis from the beginning, or that mutual work will improve them with time?
- You recently said in an interview with WinterIsComing.net that you identify as homosexual. What do you think of the story's portrayal of gay characters? I am a medievalist, and while no expert on this specific subject, in the past 30 or so years a major current in historical gender studies has pointed out that gender identities and cultural standards of sexuality were never constant. People in Western Europe a thousand years ago didn't have our contemporary standards of sexuality or gender. "Homosexuality" and "Heterosexuality", conceptualized as "identities", didn't actually exist. Richard the Lionheart was probably homosexual, but he was the greatest warrior of his generation, what they perceived as hyper-masculine: basically, medieval people had difficulty conceptualizing what we would call a "cis-gendered gay man". If anything, sexuality was much more fluid then, more like Dorne in the TV show. There was never one "traditional" marriage: as we see in the TV series, "marriage" is more often a political contract.
--The Dragon Demands (talk) 19:46, September 19, 2014 (UTC)
Some new ones for Nairn:
- These days there is a lot of talk about sectarian violence in the Middle East and elsewhere. And in the TV series, we see a lot of that in Season 4 (and this will continue into Season 5) with Daenerys in Slaver's Bay, she frees all the slaves but only sets off a sectarian conflict with the old ruling class of Masters. And in real life you see this all the time with rival Sunni, Shia/Alawite, Kurdish factions, etc. And a lot of people sort of think of sectarian violence as a problem that people "over there" live with, that they have sectarian violence problems because they're not "normal people" like people in New York or London. -- I remember seeing that Save the Children PSA a few months back showing "Imagine if London were like war-torn Syria", showing a little girl in London and a time lapse of her home getting bombed out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSIpARmq2WI) ----But in reality, sectarian violence actually does happen to "normal people" just trying to live their lives. Kristian, you grew up amidst sectarian violence within the British Isles themselves, you've mentioned some of your experiences growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles in the 1980's. What were your experiences growing up during the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland? What are your thoughts now on when you see stuff in the news about deep-seated ethnic-religious sectarian violence in Iraq and Syria? And how this compares with the sectarian violence in the TV series?
- You've got Daenerys with the freed slaves and slave masters in Meereen, then you've got other things like the ongoing fighting between the wildlings and Northmen...even though they've explicitly pointed out that the wildlings and Northmen both descend from the First Men (they even have the same religion) - or as Tyrion put it, the wildlings are just the people unlucky enough to be living north of the Wall when it was built. But we still saw in Season 4 that the whores at the Mole's Town brothel looked down on Gilly, for being a "filthy wildling"...when there is no real ethnic or religious difference between them!
--The Dragon Demands (talk) 19:54, September 19, 2014 (UTC)
Well let's see now...it's harder to come up for questions for Natalia Tena because her character hasn't been on since Season 3 ended...
Oh here's some stuff:
- Season 1 was very linear, narrow, focused on Ned Stark. The writers themselves later admitted this, that they had some problems in Season 2 that they were afraid to just "leave" a character for a long time, so they'd invent filler scenes for Arya, Tyrion, Daenerys, etc. just so the audience wouldn't forget them (Daenerys just doesn't do that much in the second book). Again, even the writers later said they regretted this, but they learned from it, and by Season 3 they were more brave about just letting a character "lie fallow" for a while. So they'd actually leave Robb Stark for a few episodes, then in episode 5 have a 10-15 minute chunk focusing on him executing Karstark for killing the Lannister nephews, etc. ----So I guess the big issue with both characters, Osha (Natalia) and Hodor (Kristian) is that they're spending time "off screen" for a while, rather than invent filler material of low quality (Osha wasn't in Season 4 and probably won't be in 5 either, Hodor being on pause in Season 5). So, what are your thoughts on this? I know every actor wants screentime, but it's a quantity versus quality thing, and we've seen in the past that invented filler scenes didn't always turn out very strong.
- The other option is to just adapt that subplot quicker: Jaime didn't do much in book 2, he's a Stark prisoner for a full year, so the end of Season 2 for Jaime and Brienne is actually the beginning of their book 3 material. The Bran-Hodor-Osha storyline followed this strategy as well: book 3 was so long it was split across two seasons, 3 and 4. The Red Wedding was actually the middle of book 3, Tyrion shooting Tywin was the end of book 3. But because the Bran storyline has so few chapters, they moved that subplot forward...so instead of Bran leaving Rickon and Osha and heading beyond the Wall at the end of season 4, that was the end of season 3, then season 4 moved ahead to book 5 material.....but book 5 is the most current book, and they used up all the material, and now Hodor is spending a year off. So your thoughts on this? I mean you want this to stand up well years after it airs, you don't want low-quality filler material, but it also meant that they used up your characters' material.
--The Dragon Demands (talk) 20:24, September 19, 2014 (UTC)
- There's been a lot of talk recently, due to the Scotland independence vote, about separatist movements in Europe. In Westeros, we've got the North trying to break away from the Iron Throne, and the Iron Islands too, trying to make these separatist movements happen. But what of the real economic impact of these decisions? Was the North splitting off what was economically viable? Wasn't it breaking up the "family" of the Seven Kingdoms? Meanwhile, Season 5 is filming in Spain this year, in Andalusia in the south. I'm informed that Natalia is of Basque background, speaks Spanish and Basque, and the Basque region in the western Pyrenees has its own separatist movements. Your thoughts on the Scotland/North analogies?
- I'm informed that Natalia speaks fluent Spanish - did they ever ask you if you wanted to dub your own lines into the Spanish language dub of the TV series? Do you think they would let you if you asked?
- Natalia has some Spanish background, has shot some films in Spain, spent time there, fairly familiar with the culture. It was announced that in Season 5, not only are they filming in Spain, but in the city of Osuna, Spain, they will be filming in an actively used bull-fighting ring. And this has led to all sorts of debate in the fandom about whether this is "promoting" bull-fighting, others say that criticizing bullfighting is "mocking Spain's traditions" and so forth. Thoughts on this? (Were those actual rabbits you had to skin in Season 3? They provided them dead already, right? Well both rabbits and bulls are "food animals"...)
- Question for both: Joffrey Baratheon: Great king, or the greatest king?
--The Dragon Demands (talk) 20:29, September 19, 2014 (UTC)