...I'm actually having more trouble coming up with these for Theon than Hodor, because Alfie has done many other interviews and answered a lot of major questions:
- Since you were cast, there has been a lot of speculation about how the TV series could even physically portray the torture Theon goes through without some sort of Gollum -like CGI. Body language and acting from Season 4 episode 2 was really amazing. But certain things are impossible - the books describe that Theon/Reek has lost something like 50 pounds, that due to spending a full year in a dungeon without seeing the light of the sun his skin has become white and pasty, and his face looks as strained and weathered as an old man...to the point that people who knew Theon cannot physically recognize him anymore. Moreover, Ramsay cut off three of his fingers in the books (I think a pinky on one hand and two fingers from the other so he can never wield a bow and arrow again properly). We saw Ramsay cut off at least one finger "on-screen" (the books also implied that he was castrated but didn't outright state it). Did Ramsay cut off other fingers off-screen by now? Or will you just be wearing long sleeves or keeping your hands out of frame to imply that he did this? For that matter the books also say he knocked all of Theon's teeth out, leaving behind stubs and splinters - will you be wearing an appliance or something in a scene or two to show this happened? Another big point: the books say that Reek hobbles like an old man because Ramsay also cut off several of his toes. We saw Reek hobbling with a notable limp in Season 4 episode 2 - was this meant to imply that this also happened in the TV continuity?
- What kind of research for PTSD/torture victims did you do to get ready for Reek in Season 4? Your entire body language/performance very visibly changed.
- The books also make it a point that from the stress of his torture, Theon's hair turns white. Given that you actually have blonde hair in real life, wouldn't this have been a fairly easy effect to achieve?
- No one ever outright stated to us why Theon's sister Asha Greyjoy was renamed to Yara Greyjoy. We assumed this was to avoid confusion with Osha the wildling in Season 2....despite the fact that Theon's sister is actually a far more important character, and actually a POV narrator by this point in the books. How did you first learn his sister was renamed? Didn't anyone point out in Season 1, "maybe we should rename the wildling lady instead of renaming Theon's sister because she's actually a bigger character?"
- Serious question: If Theon had a direwolf too, because he's sort of the seventh Stark child in a way, what would he have named it?
- Serious question: This was ambiguous in the books, but was it ever explained to you that Ramsay has been outright raping Theon? Not just castrating him, but I mean there are moments in the books when Ramsay seems bizarrely intimate with Theon, like a prison gang form of intimidation.
- Point of clarification: the two bedmates of Ramsays that helped him torture Theon in Season 3 were named Myranda and Violet. Myranda returned in Season 4 episode 2, together with Ramsay as he was hunting another girl. This girl is - or was - actually a new character named Tansy. Many people who saw this episode blindly assumed that this second girl was actually Violet, despite the fact that they look nothing alike, and Ramsay has referred to them both in-dialogue by entirely separate names. Anyway, was the girl Ramsay and Myranda hunted originally supposed to actually be Violet? Showing that Myranda had casually turned on her, and how Ramsay will flippantly kill his own followers on a whim? In which case Tansy was just a replacement? Or was Tansy supposed to be some innocent village girl he felt like hunting?
- Should we actually credit you, officially, as playing "Theon Greyjoy" on the show, or "Reek"? It was very disturbing in the novels, in which POV chapters are normally named after their character, i.e. "Bran", "Eddard", "Sansa", etc., when it switched from "Theon" to "Reek", to establish just how badly he'd been driven insane from torture.
- Major question: Back in early Season 2, despite the fact that people treated Theon like an idiot, he directly pointed out to his father how big of a mistake turning on the North would be. Robb Stark suggested that the North and Iron Islands team up to fight the Lannisters. Balon Greyjoy turned around and "went for the lowhanging fruit", attacking the North...in the hope that the Lannisters would then reward him, for doing what he should have done anyway had he stayed loyal to them? Words fail to express how politically and strategically stupid this decision was. Even Theon pointed out that it was suicide, Tywin Lannister wouldn't reward them for turning on the North even if the Lannisters won --- do you take a sort of grim satisfaction that Theon turned out to be right all along about that?
- Final question, and quote this to Alfie exactly: "Can you name a single real battle that the Bastard of Bolton has ever actually won, that anyone need fear him? Any idiot bastard can rip the wings off a fly or torture a chained up dog. That does not make the bastard Snow cunning."