When John Bradley was shooting Traders, a sharp-angled recession thriller, on the streets of Dublin, he had to contend with the odd smart-arse comment from passers-by. Bradley is, after all, part of a television phenomenon. Since 2011 he has played Samwell Tarly, amiable, tubby pal to the more heroic Jon Snow, in the kill-tastic Game of Thrones. But it was his co-star, Killian Scott, who attracted the most attention.
"That was interesting," Bradley says. "We were shooting on the streets. And that was difficult for Killian as he is so recognisable. He's a superstar in Dublin. It was hard to stop local schoolkids shouting things about Love/Hate."
Bradley has an interesting take on his character in Traders. He plays Vernon Stynes, an apparently harmless computer drone, who comes up with a savage scheme to divert recently laid-off high- flyers. Two such men will empty their bank accounts, place the cash in a duffle bag and fight to the death for the combined total. We just don't expect such savage logic from Vernon.
“You think, because of the conventions of cinema, that the good-looking one is the bad guy and the little podgy, sat-upon one is going to be the good guy. He’ll be under the heel but he’ll come good in the end. This completely plays against that.”
He does himself down, but I can see what he means.
“Well, it’s just that a guy who looks like Vernon is expected to be relatable. But he’s the cold one.”
This is a very good point. When the clumsy, bulky Sam lumbers into Game of Thrones, we expect him to be a representative of the decent common man and that is, indeed, pretty much how it works out.
“Yes. But if there is something Vernon and Sam have in common it is that they exploit that image. They play on the fact that they’re seen as harmless.”
Desperate situations
Traders, written and directed by Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy, has worrying things to say about the despair that attends high-end redundancies. Can Bradley really buy this notion that a financial-services professional could, if sacked, sink so quickly into murder (and potentially suicide)?
“Around the world there are some people in really desperate situations, but suicide would never occur to them. There are starving people who would never think that. But if you had that lurking in you already, it could drive you to suicide. That’s the difference.”
Bradley (27) was raised in Manchester, where he attended St Paul’s Catholic High School and Loreto College. I don’t wish to jump to any conclusions, but that background says Manchester-Irish to me.
“Yeah. Dad’s maternal side are all northside Dublin,” he confirms. “So coming back to shoot this was nice. You don’t feel like you’re going somewhere else to shoot. It feels a little like going home. We came here a lot when I was a kid.”
Bradley, who was raised in a pretty ordinary home, became interested in the business of entertainment in the way anybody of his generation might: he watched the telly. He doesn’t remember ever being taken to the theatre. Nobody in the family trod even the tiniest board.
"It was all telly. And it was more comedy than anything else. I knew I wanted to be an entertainer before I knew I wanted to be an actor. I didn't even know how acting worked. I'd see things like Dad's Army or Only Fools and Horses and think: I want to do that. Because the effect on me was so complete."
Fantasy thing
Bradley studied drama at Manchester Metropolitan University and quickly embraced the rhythms of the profession. He has the sort of likeable face and warm delivery that serve character actors well. Things could hardly have gone better for him in the early days. When he was still in college, he got a call to audition for this new fantasy thing. The writers had already cast the part, but Bradley brought something unexpected.
“It was the first audition I ever did. They had somebody in mind but they’d heard this guy was coming down from Manchester so they thought they’d better see him. I love an audition. I like the challenge of the concentration of the audition.”
Nobody had much idea Game of Thrones was going to take off. Before the show came along, the convention was that fantasy only played to a tight, specialist audience. But, just as Star Trek reached beyond the science-fiction fans, the adaptation of George RR Martin's epic sequence has drawn in a wide range of enthusiasts. It's a phenomenon of the age.
Nonetheless, there are hardcore fanatics. I wonder if he has had any worrying entanglements with Samistas (or whatever they might be called).
“People always say, ‘You must get sick of this?’ ” he says. “But it’s one of those shows that people only watch it if they like it. It’s not something – like a soap that’s constantly in the tabloids – that bothers you if you don’t watch it. It’s not on the front of every magazine. People have to commit to all this time. So, after five seasons, you’ve wheedled out all those who don’t like it.”
Bradley will be back for season six in a few months' time. Will Sam's great pal, Jon Snow, return? Well, despite looking a bit dead at the end of series five, he is on the posters. Obviously, Bradley can't say too much. It must be a tense business working in Game of Thrones. Even the most popular characters can get killed off.
“I haven’t got a clue what happens at the end. I think we are all grateful we’ve made it this far. We’ve probably made it to series seven.”
Does that constitute a spoiler? If so, we apologise.
- Traders is on limited release from March 11th
TRUE NORTH: FIVE MANCHESTER ACTORS
- Ben Kingsley: Born in Yorkshire, but grew up in Pendlebury, a section of Salford. Learned his trade in Manchester am-dram.
- Christopher Eccleston: Another Salford lad. Began training at Salford tech before moving on to Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
- Albert Finney: Raised round the corner from Kingsley. One of the northern voices who changed London theatre in the early 1960s.
- Ian McShane: The future Lovejoy grew up the son of a professional footballer in historic Davyhulme.
- Bernard Hill: It's true. The star of Boys from the Blackstuff, the ultimate Liverpool epic, is actually from Blackley. It doesn't seem right.
