It’s a pointless exercise to envision anyone else besides John Bradley as Game of Thrones’ Samwell Tarly, who’s brought warmth, humor, and many monochromatic cloaks to the role throughout the show’s eight seasons. But for Bradley, who swung by Conan last night to reminisce about a speech he gave at a recent cast party, it was a transcendent experience that helped give his life meaning. As Bradley recalled, he was “somebody who grew up overweight and kind of unhappy because of it,†and insecurities always followed him around. “You think life is going to pass you by because of it,†he explained. “All the time when you go to bed and you think, I’d give anything to wake up and not have this weight.†But what happened next is so lovely:
While I was feeling bad about myself, David and Dan, our producers, and everybody else connected to the show, they were looking for me. They were looking for exactly me. And it’s not just a case of they’re going to accept all of what I consider to be faults about myself. But they’re going to see them as virtues, and they’re going to be my key into this amazing experience and meeting all these amazing people.
If I’d have known that they were looking for me, and what kind of effect that was going to have on the rest of my life, then I’d have … I just wouldn’t have been able to believe it.
Well then. If you need us, we’ll be blubbering by the watercooler.