Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.tvline.com
HBO
“Game of Thrones” may have launched the careers of several A-list actors, but HBO’s acclaimed fantasy series also featured plenty of well-known celebrities in smaller roles. Over the course of the show’s eight seasons, a whole host of musicians, actors, and athletes all made their way to Westeros.
Some of these stars appeared in very sneaky minor cameos; others had fairly significant roles, even if fans may not have recognized them at the time. In addition to these five names, this list will also shout out a few of the other notable faces that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss enlisted for the hit series. (Notably, Benioff and Weiss themselves made a cameo appearance as a pair of wildlings in the fourth episode of the final season.)
One famous person you won’t find here is George W. Bush. The former president didn’t actually appear on “Game of Thrones,” but, in Season 1, a prop resembling him was used as a decapitated head on a spike next to Ned Stark’s. This “cameo” caused a minor scandal, prompting HBO to issue an official apology. Of course, since it wasn’t the real Bush on the show, we can’t count it as a true guest appearance anyway.
Hannah Waddingham
Macall B. Polay/HBO
Before Hannah Waddingham won an Emmy for playing Rebecca Welton, the “Ted Lasso” star played a villain on “Game of Thrones.” You’d be forgiven for not recognizing her, though. While the A.F.C. Richmond owner is more than a little fabulous, Septa Unella is a religious zealot who follows Jonathan Pryce’s High Sparrow in tormenting Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). Though she appears in Seasons 5 and 6, Septa Unella is best remembered for chanting “Shame!” and ringing a bell during Cersei’s walk of atonement.
Cersei later gets her revenge, of course, and Unella meets a pretty gruesome end — locked in a dungeon, tortured, and left at the mercy of the Mountain. And this scene was pretty rough for Waddingham to film. “And there I was strapped to a wooden table with proper big straps for ten hours. And definitely, other than childbirth, it was the worst day of my life,” she later told Collider, describing the scene in which Cersei pours wine on her face. After shooting was done, the episode’s director, Miguel Sapochnik, asked if Waddingham was alright. When she said no, Sapochnik pointed out that she had essentially just been waterboarded. “And I was like, ‘Yup, you don’t need to tell me that!'” Waddingham recalled.
Ed Sheeran
Helen Sloan/HBO
Ed Sheeran’s appearance in the Season 7 premiere of “Game of Thrones” straddled the line between cameo and guest role. Sheeran agreed to appear on the show as a favor to Maisie Williams, who was a big fan of his; he played a Lannister soldier named Eddie who, aside from being a talented singer, seems like a nice enough, average guy. Even though Arya holds a vendetta against the Lannisters for what they did to her family, you get the sense that this humanizing moment, in which she meets a group of ordinary soldiers, challenges her beliefs.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sheeran’s role in the show was controversial. Many fans thought having a well-known celebrity like Sheeran in a key role challenged their suspension of disbelief. While other musicians had appeared on “Game of Thrones” before this, they had all been given background parts. In contrast, it was nearly impossible to not think “Oh, that’s Ed Sheeran” when he turned up on the screen.
On Benny Blanco’s “Friends Keep Secrets” podcast, Sheeran said the backlash probably had something to do with how “omnipresent” he was in pop culture at the time. But he also said he wasn’t that surprised by the hate. “I just get s*** on for things,” he said (via Entertainment Weekly). Sheeran recovered from the criticism just fine, of course, as he won two Grammys the year after his “Thrones” episode aired. His character Eddie wasn’t so lucky, however: A line of dialogue from Season 8 implies that he had his eyelids burned off by dragonfire during the Battle of the Goldroad.
Sigur Rós
HBO
Ed Sheeran was the most prominent musician to appear on “Game of Thrones,” but he wasn’t the first. In Season 4, the Icelandic band Sigur Rós made a cameo in “The Lion and the Rose,” one of the show’s best episodes. They played the band at Joffrey’s wedding — though, as it turns out, Joffrey isn’t too impressed with their performance, and he ends up dismissively throwing gold at them. Around the same time, the group also released a cover of one of the songs from “Game of Thrones,” the haunting Lannister tune “The Rains of Castamere.”
Many other musicians made cameos after Sigur Rós. Another Icelandic band, Of Monsters and Men, appeared as a band in the Season 6 episode “The Door,” while members of the heavy metal band Mastodon played wildlings in the Season 8 episode “Hardhome.” (“I watched my best friends, Brent and Bill, murdered right in front of me, as I myself was stabbed in the stomach and had my throat slit multiple times, and I didn’t mind at all,” Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor told Pitchfork.) Chris Stapleton, Coldplay drummer Will Champion, and Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody also made cameos in “Game of Thrones.” It’s a surprisingly musical show.
Rob McElhenney
HBO
Rob McElhenney, a.k.a. Rob Mac, is best known for co-creating and starring in the long-running FX comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Things weren’t so sunny for him when he made a cameo appearance in the “Game of Thrones” Season 8 premiere, however. In “Winterfell,” McElhenney plays an Ironborn soldier who gets an arrow through his eye during a naval battle. In an Instagram post confirming the cameo, McElhenney shared a close-up photo of his gory demise with the cheeky caption: “Don’t blink.” McElhenney wasn’t the only comedian to die during the battle, either; “Silicon Valley” star Martin Starr makes a cameo in the scene, too.
McElhenney’s appearance in “Game of Thrones” isn’t quite as random as you might think. “GoT” creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss actually wrote an episode of “Always Sunny” – the Season 9 episode “Flowers for Charlie.” They then made cameos in the show’s twelfth season. McElhenney, Benioff, and Weiss are all good friends in real life, and it was McElhenney who suggested the duo hire Matt Shakman, who had helmed many “Sunny” episodes, as a director for “Game of Thrones” Season 7. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the duo recalled how they pranked McElhenney by telling him Shakman wasn’t working out as a director. “That was the darkest practical joke,” Shakman added. “Rob was legitimately tortured about it. He was so concerned for me and was like, ‘What can I do? Who can I talk to?’ It went on for way too long.”
Noah Syndergaard
Macall B. Polay/HBO
Sports in Westeros typically consist of jousts and melees at tournaments — but, at one point, a Major League Baseball player managed to make his way to the Seven Kingdoms. In the Season 4 episode “The Spoils of War,” former New York Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard makes a very brief cameo as a Lannister soldier. The pitcher shows off his arm in the scene as he expertly throws a spear that takes out an attacking Dothraki rider.
Syndergaard, whose nickname is Thor, has made a few cameos in TV shows, including on “Kevin Can Wait,” “Uncle Grandpa,” “Impractical Jokers,” and “Vikings.” But his “Thrones” appearance, which he shot in one day while on set in Spain, probably ranks the highest for him. “I think it’s the greatest TV show of all time,” Syndergaard told The Hollywood Reporter. “To be able to say I was on ‘Game of Thrones’ is an unbelievable feeling.”
Syndergaard wasn’t the only pro athlete to make a “Thrones” cameo. NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers briefly appeared in the penultimate episode of the series, “The Bells,” as a resident of King’s Landing who gets obliterated by dragonfire.
