Game of Thrones Star Says Reaction to Final Episode Was "Sad"

Jacob Anderson, who played Grey Worm in Game of Thrones, was pretty happy with what he called a "risky" finale for the long-running fantasy series, and he was disappointed when fans hated it. The actor, who also appeared in Broadchurch and starred in Interview With the Vampire, has some experience with high audience expectations, but he seems fairly sure that the final season was never going to make the Game of Thrones viewership happy.

In a recent interview, he called the reaction "sad" and said that it's easy to assume the cast was as disappointed as the audience with the finale, but that he was proud of the work, and had no strong feelings about the way it ultimately turned out.

"I didn't have strong feelings about the finale. I think everybody assumes that we all hated it," Anderson told PopSugar. "That's not the case at all. I remember when I first got the scripts for that final season, I was like, 'There's something kind of punk about this season. It feels risky.'...And I feel like it was kind of fun. I enjoyed it and it was fun to make. It was full on, but it was fun to make."

He added that it was difficult to watch the audience response when he thought about the cast and crew, and how hard and long they had worked on the much-reviled final season.

"We were filming for 11 months in the snow and there were thousands and thousands of people worked so hard on [the final season]," Anderson said. "And then for it to just, when it came out for people to just straight up be like, 'You need to remake this. This is terrible. This is the worst thing ever.' It was a little bit sad. But to be honest, I expected people to not like it, even though I liked it. I thought people were going to be annoyed by things."

You can see Game of Thrones on HBO Max (at least until they randomly decide to drop it), where its spinoff House of the Dragon is releasing new episodes.