Sid Talks DS9, Peaky Blinders, GoT and More in New Interview

StarTrek.com posted a two-part interview with Alexander Siddig this week, discussing his time on Star Trek and attending conventions to reconnect with fans, as well as his roles in The Kennedys: After Camelot, Peaky Blinders, Game of Thrones, and Recon (the FOX pilot that wasn’t picked up earlier this year). Sid also talks about celebrity in the ’90s vs now, as well as the new secrecy surrounding so many projects today.

If you’ve read/listened to interviews with Sid before, you know he can get quite philosophical and doesn’t have much of a censor when it comes to talking about what was happening behind the scenes. This time around, he’s opening up about what went down with his role on Game of Thrones:

Our prince did not meet a pleasant end…

He didn’t. It’s funny, I’m not really sure what happened there. I was contracted to do at least four episodes this season, but then I was in L.A. doing publicity for something else, and I got a call at the Chateau Marmont and there were familiar voices on the other end of the phone. It was one of those guys, and because they didn’t introduce themselves it was like, “Hi, it’s me.” I was like, “Is that David or Daniel?” Anyway, they said, “You know what this phone call is about.” I was like, “Yeah, well, I guess I do.” “So we were going to kill you off at the end of last season, but we decided that we’re going to have to kill you off at the beginning of next season.” I was like, “Okay, life goes on.” But there was something wrong about that because I had been contracted for four episodes in the following season, so if they were going to kill me off at the end of the last season why would they contract me for those four episodes? Because it costs them money whether I do them or not, so it’s not great business sense to do it just in case.

So something happened; I have no idea what. There was an enormous amount of fan excitement when I got named to be on the show, and everyone was like, “Oh my god, yes, Doran Martell. He’s going to be great as Doran Martell.” That might have been the kiss of death. Maybe they didn’t want quite that much attention on that character. Maybe they thought, “Well, let’s prove that we’re going to stray from the books. We’re going to do something else, and he will be our first example of that.” So maybe that could have been the case. Or maybe I just screwed up. Maybe I said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.