‘Game of Thrones’ star John Bradley: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss ‘shouldn’t have to prove themselves again’
“Game of Thrones” star John Bradley said he hopes his new Netflix sci-fi series “3 Body Problem” rehabilitates the images of the “GOT” creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
“There were no expectations on David and Dan [Weiss] or any of us when we started ‘Game of Thrones,’ because nobody knew who we were,” Bradley told The Post. “It’s only as the series went on that the expectations grew. And for this [new show], there’s loads of expectation going in, because they’ve become a brand.”
From 2011 to 2019, Bradley, now 35, starred on all eight seasons of the HBO fantasy behemoth as Samwell Tarly, a k a Sam, Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington) more bookish friend.
“GOT” — which reportedly drew in 44.3 million viewers per episode in its final season — was one of Bradley’s first roles. Now, he’s also co-starring in Benioff and Weiss’ first big follow-up show, “3 Body Problem,” premiering Thursday on Netflix (and also helmed by Alexander Woo).
” ‘Game of Thrones’ ended in a way which some people didn’t like . . . it feels like [Benioff and Weiss] have to win those fans back over,” said Bradley.
“They shouldn’t have to prove themselves again. But, it kind of feels like they’re trying to. I just hope this show goes some way to restore some of the reputation that they rightly deserve.”
Based on a series of novels by Cixin Liu, “3 Body Problem” is a sci-fi epic following Detective Da Shi (Benedict Wong), who’s investigating as scientists all over the world are dying by suicide. His story dovetails with “The Oxford Five,” a group of former college students who followed different life paths: there’s tech pioneer Auggie (Eiza González); research assistant Saul (Jovan Adepo); theoretical physicist Jin (Jess Hong); teacher Will (Alex Sharp); and Jack (Bradley), who’s now rich from a snack food empire.
“When ‘Game of Thrones’ ended, because it was an entire decade of my life — it was pretty much my entire 20s — I wasn’t desperate to get back into another long-running genre based TV series,” said Bradley.
But, he said, Benioff and Weiss reached out to him.
“They said, ‘We’re doing this new thing, and we’d really like you to be in it. And, we’re going to give you a character to play, which is unlike any character you’ve really played before, and it’s closest to your own personality.’ ”
He added that what he shares with his character, Jack Rooney, is, “We both come from backgrounds where it’s so unlikely that we’ve ended up in the place that we’ve ended up in life . . . a tough working-class background in the north of England. It’s very rare that people from there become physics geniuses studying at Oxford, or become actors doing American projects and trying to forge a Hollywood career. I think that what’s similar about us . . . We’ve both got chips on our shoulders about being accepted, and being judged on merit.”
The widely maligned “Game of Thrones” ending saw audiences creating an online petition to remake it in 2019. But Bradley said that most of his fan interactions are positive.
“Even when [fans] come up and say that they weren’t the biggest fans of the way the series ended, it’s never as vitriolic and aggressive as anything that you read online,” said Bradley.
“I think that says a lot, really, about how people get emboldened online . . . as time goes on, I hope that people will start seeing the show as a whole piece again, and remember that David and Dan were in charge of the show when everybody loved it, and it was everybody’s favorite thing.
“So hopefully ‘3 Body Problem’ will go some way to reminding people just how great they are when they’re at the top of their game,” said Bradley.
