Game of Thrones has a ton of great stars working on the show, and while we hear the stories of so many of the prominent cast members, we don’t get to see how it is on the other end, the thousands of people playing the White Walkers and wights. In a new interview, Ross Mullan, who has played a White Walker for three seasons, talked about how the experience is. Read on!
Now in case you don’t know, Mullan played the first White Walker seen on the show. He is the one that shows up end of Season 2, looks into the camera, and screams. He is the one that rode an army in the snowy mist past Samwell Tarly, the one that was then killed by Samwell Tarly with a Dragonglass blade. Mullan even returned to play another White Walker, the one that takes Craster‘s baby from the forest to take it to the Night King. In an interview with inews, he spoke about his first appearance on the show:
“It’s the reveal. The season finale. All these things came together to unveil the White Walker. He looks down the camera. He lets out that scream. It’s spine-chilling.
I was bare-chested, wearing a mini-skirt. We had a zombie army – as you do – and a styrofoam rock for Sam to hide behind.”
He went on to talk about another scene, from Season 4, that was the most memorable bit:
“I was riding out of a storm made of soap and shredded paper, with my horse bucking beneath me. It was an incredible experience.”
While Mullan hadn’t heard of Game of Thrones before his gig on the show, he had worked on the 2010 film Clash of the Titans, that had him in a role requiring heavy prosthetics. Game of Thrones was similar, but much lighter. It however still took a team of four artists five hours to get the Walker look ready:
“Once you’ve done one big prosthetics job, and nearly died doing it, they think you can handle anything.
When they were putting on the make-up I realised how incredibly beautiful the work was. I was looking at myself in the mirror going, ‘wow, this is wild!’”
The prerequisites included the ability to swordfight and ride a horse, the latter of which Mullan didn’t know, so he then underwent five months of training for the same. Mullan acknowledged the challenge of playing a character that had no dialogues:
“You don’t have scripts and lines to work with. You try out different things, and are slowly being dictated to visually. It took four or five days to shoot a two-minute scene, because you’re seeing how different approaches and variations work.”
He continued to talk about his experience on set:
“One of my favourite things about Game of Thrones was coming off set, before I’d taken off the costume, and making small-talk with the make-up crew. You’re standing there dressed as a White Walker, and they’re going: ‘So what are your plans for tonight?’”
He talked about how such characters rely on prosthetics more than CGI, and how the two need to be just right:
“It’s about the difference between 100 per cent CGI work and prosthetic work. The best work lies in marrying the two I think.
With the White Walkers it’s 99 per cent prosthetics. Only the steam coming off my body and the blue eyes are CGI. But you need a bit to blend the scene.”
Mullan says he’s happy with his choices and certainly enjoys having played an iconic character:
“To be an iconic character in a TV show? To have toys made of me? It’s spectacular.
I told my mother I wanted to be a monster when I grew up. She told me that although I could be an actor when I was older, I couldn’t be a monster.
I proved her wrong!”
Well, he did! What do you think about this interview? Talk to us in the comments, down below!
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