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IWAN RHEON
W
hen it comes to the topic of slicing people up alive, Iwan Rheon is well placed to seriously consider the question: “Can you get worse than that?” The 30-year-old actor has played Ramsay Snow of House Bolton in the bold and bloody, award-winning HBO show, Game Of Thrones, based on the fantasy books by George R.R Martin, since 2013. And, as season six approaches, his character – who has a penchant for flaying – shows no signs of becoming any less sadistic. While contractually coy when asked about upcoming storylines, Carmarthen-born Rheon admits Ramsay is unlikely to develop a soul over the next glut of episodes: “I don’t know. Well, no, probably not. I guess we’ll have to wait and see...” At the end of series five, Ramsay – stocky, cruel, with hard eyes and a gleeful approach to his forte, psychological, emotional and physical torture – had married Sansa Stark (played by Sophie Turner), but she’d escaped, taking Ramsay’s father’s hopes of a Stark-Bolton family allegiance in the north with her. The episode “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”, during which Ramsay raped Sansa on their wedding night, was one of the most talked about of the last series after it received considerable backlash from fans and critics over its brutality. “Because of the gravitas of the situation, and the character that it happened to, I knew there would be some kind of reaction to it, obviously,” says Rheon carefully. “It’s not really for me to comment on why that is, I’m an actor, I played the role, I tried to do it as truthfully as possible and tell our story in the world that we’ve created in the most believable way.” “It’s really dark and horrific what happens to Sansa, but it was an inevitability in a world where cruel things happen,” he adds, pausing. “And it happens in the world today, and I think that’s a very important thing to not lose track of, because, you know,
you can go mad about a TV series, but then people ignore that it happens every day.” Frank, eloquent and to the point, Rheon, who moved to Cardiff aged five and began his acting career on Pobol Y Cwm aged 17, admits that it can be draining playing such a vicious part. “It’s very heavy material and he does horrific things, and I’ve had bad – terrible – nights’ sleep because of how horrific the scene is, but I’m quite good at not letting things get to me too badly,” he explains. “I tend to [remind myself] that acting is playing and I don’t do any method stuff or anything like that, it’s very detached from me, so I guess, I deal with it.” Fortunately – if somewhat surprisingly – unlike his co-star Carice van Houten whose character, priestess Melisandre, orchestrated the burning alive of a child in season five, he hasn’t yet received death threats from viewers. “Generally I don’t get really bad reactions,” muses the former Misfits and Grandma’s House actor. “I get people saying: ‘You’re horrible’, but in the way that they understand that I’m an actor playing the role. I don’t think anyone actually thinks that I’m Ramsay Bolton – I hope not!” In fact, despite the success of the show, his daily life hasn’t been too affected (“I can still get on the train and do normal things”) and the toughest aspect of being involved in it is often the weather. The House Bolton scenes are filmed in the wilds of Northern Ireland, and in series five, he and his on-screen father, Roose (played by Michael McElhatton) were stuck up on a hill for quite a while… “That was immense,” recalls Rheon, who won a Best Supporting Actor Olivier Award in 2010 for his performance in Spring Awakening. “It was really windy, so you’re getting blown over and we’re both there shivering. It was unbelievable. I’ve never experienced cold like it. They throw challenges at you, because no matter how much preparation you’ve done for that scene, when you turn up and there’s a wind blowing so hard and you can’t actually speak because your mouth is so frozen, it’s difficult.” The cast and crew are also faced with the mammoth, seemingly insurmountable task, of trying to keep scripts and plotlines secret. “It’s incredibly difficult, especially with modern technology – things like drones. You can fly a drone onto set, people could film what we’re
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• Game of Thrones season 6 premieres Monday, April 25 exclusively on Sky Atlantic, watch live or catch-up on Sky and NOW TV
filming, which is bad and it’s ruining it for everyone else, because if everyone knows what’s going on, then what’s the point in watching the show? And people put so much effort into making this show,” he says, riled. “It’s terrible that it gets ruined by a couple of people who want to know what happens - just wait!” So there have been drone issues on set? “Yes. Why?” he asks wryly. “Do you want to know where to get the footage? Come talk to me later…” When he’s not dodging drones or theatrically flaying people, Rheon stars as Ash “the handsome neighbour” in ITV sitcom Vicious alongside Ian McKellan and Derek Jacobi. “It’s totally different,” he explains. “Much lighter, it’s a comedy, it’s fun, but it’s nice. And obviously as an actor you want to play the greatest variety of characters you can, because playing the same role over and over again would get boring, so it’s nice to be able to show a bit of range.” He’s also a keen singersongwriter and guitarist, and released his debut album, Dinard, last year. “Music is very important to me,” he explains passionately. “I’ll probably, hopefully, do some gigs [this year]. I write songs anyway, so I guess I’ll probably make another album at some point, but I don’t want it to become a pressured career thing, I want it to be as a release, so it’s important that it’s not all about money.” Told you he was to the point.