Actor Isaac Hempstead Wright — better known, perhaps, as Bran Stark or the Three-Eyed Raven on Game of Thrones — dropped by Jimmy Kimmel’s show this week, and he helped clear up some confusion around why his character is constantly staring, creepily and intensely, at the other residents of Winterfell.
Hempstead Wright’s Bran is a character marked by early tragedy; after Jaime Lannister pushed him off a high ledge in the first episode of the show, he was relegated to a wheelchair. His further connection to the supernatural has led him to morph over the seasons into an all-knowing yet admittedly socially awkward figure.
At the end of season eight’s premiere, Jaime and Bran have just spotted each other in the Winterfell courtyard for the first time. Kimmel decided to bring it up.
“The look you gave him…” Kimmel said.
“I’m kind of getting good at this sort of intense stare,” Hempstead Wright explained. “But it’s kind of aided by the fact that I’m completely blind when I’m on set. I don’t have my glasses, and I don’t have contact lenses.” He also related an anecdote from filming on the previous season with Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark. “She said to me, ‘Isaac, your stare is like — you’re staring into my soul’ and I was like, ‘I can’t see you!’”
So there we have it: get the Three-Eyed Raven some glasses, and maybe he wouldn’t be so angsty around his family after all.
