John Bradley spent 2011 to 2019 playing Samwell Tarly on HBO's "Game of Thrones," but that wasn't his only dragon-related television project. In 2016 he appeared in "The Last Dragonslayer," a TV movie released by Sky 1 that, unlike the HBO series, is aimed at a family audience.
The film follows an orphan named Jennifer Strange, who is destined to become the last dragonslayer in a world where magic is falling behind technology and risks becoming obsolete. It is based on the novel of the same name by Jasper Fforde, and Bradley played Gordon, Jennifer's sidekick. The cast also included Ellise Chappell, Adeel Akhtar, Matt Berry and Andrew Buchan, among others. "The Last Dragonslayer" is available to stream for free on Tubi.
Bradley explained to SciFiNow why he took a part so tonally different from his "Game of Thrones" character. He described Gordon as someone who possesses all the facts and is highly confident in delivering them, with a kind of military precision and no grey areas. "I've never played anything like that before," he said.
Beyond the dragons, both projects share a literary origin: "Game of Thrones" was adapted from George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Speaking to Cherwell in June 2023, Bradley credited Martin's writing for the show's rise to a cultural phenomenon, pointing to the risks it took in killing off characters. He said Martin had written extensively for television, where the rule is not to kill your lead character too early, and grew tired of that restriction, wanting to write books that broke those rules. According to Bradley, that approach produced many surprising moments for fans, which he felt were executed brilliantly.
Sources: TVLine.