Ellie Kendrick knows firsthand what it’s like to maintain the intense level of secrecy on the “Game of Thrones” set.
Kendrick – who plays Meera Reed, Bran Stark’s traveling partner and protector on the HBO hit – said that watching the show can be just as surprising for her as it is for the fans.
“It’s super-duper difficult, even as an actor, to get ahold of a script,” Kendrick told Business Insider at the “Game of Thrones: Behind the Scenes” event on Friday in New York City, in honor of the newly released season-six Blu-ray/DVD set.
“You have to go through all of these security processes before they’ll let you have them,” Kendrick continued. “As an actor, you don’t even see the stuff that you’re not in some of the time. They’re very careful about getting the scripts out there.”
For example, Kendrick found out that Jon Snow would be returning to the series pretty much the same way the fans did.
"I'd seen Kit [Harington] in town, so I knew he was kind of back," Kendrick, who primarily shoots her scenes in Northern Ireland, said. "We all had to keep our mouths shut, but that's part of the fun of being a part of this series."
That, of course, extends to character deaths, which the actors are typically in the dark about until it's pretty much upon them.
"There's an atmosphere of fear at times on the set," Kendrick said. "You never know. You never get told you're going to die. Any actor on 'Game of Thrones' is lying if they say they don't do this. The first thing you do is skip through the script: 'Do I die? Do I die?' So, yeah, it's all a surprise to us."
Death is pretty final on the show - unless you're Jon Snow or Daenarys Targaryen, of course - and the executive producers have taken advantage of the situation for a few laughs.
"The producers can be very cheeky with it," Kendrick said. "They've even sometimes written in fake deaths. So the actors will sometimes read a death scene that they just get given. It happened to Alfie Allen. They gave him a fake scene that they'd written where he died. He was like, "Huh [gasps], I die?" They played a big trick on him, which was hilarious."
As for Meera's future on the show, you guessed it: Kendrick knows very little about her character's future.
"I'm genuinely not lying when I tell you I don't know," she said. "So it's as much as a surprise to me as it is for the people who are watching it. I'm yet to find out what's going to happen to Meera. Fingers crossed, something good."
Additional reporting by Chris Snyder.
