Game of Thrones season 7: ‘Dragonstone’ director on Ed Sheeran cameo backlash

Ed Sheeran made a notable appearance on the Game of Thrones season 7 premiere “Dragonstone,” playing a Lannister soldier who happens to sing. It was one of the rare examples of stunt-casting that we’ve seen on the series over the years, and as we said in our review last night, it was completely unneeded. While Sheeran did a fine job, he’s so famous that when you see him, you automatically think “hey, it’s Ed Sheeran” and completely don’t think about anything else. It’s like Bono showing up in Vikings or Taylor Swift playing a relative on This Is Us — there are certain people whose presence is just inherently distracting, even if all of the intentions in the world entering it are good.

With all of this said, Sheeran, of course, doesn’t deserve some of the negative attention that he received for doing the show. He was just doing something fun, and if anything, you can look at the showrunners for deciding that this was a good idea. Let’s put it this way: If someone came up to you and said that you had a chance to appear on Game of Thrones, would you really say no to that? Why in the world would want to?

Today, we do have a little more insight into what the experience was like for Sheeran. Speaking per Newsweek, the director of the episode in Jeremy Podeswa handed down a little more insight into what doing this episode ultimately entailed for Sheeran, and how the backlash is completely out of Ed’s control:

“He came into this with only lovely intentions to come and do a good job and sing well, so I think that’s the only drag … If people didn’t know who Ed was, they wouldn’t have thought about it twice. The hoo-ha seems to be from things that are outside of the world of the show. In the world of the show, he did a lovely job, and he looks like he belongs in that world.”

If there is a lesson to learn from this whole incident, it’s that Game of Thrones should chill out their musician cameos — this is far from the first time that it’s happened, but in the past they’ve been a little more subtle and akin to Easter eggs. To think there was also that rumor for a time that famed UFC fighter Conor McGregor had a cameo in this season. We certainly hope that this doesn’t turn out to be true just so that we don’t have to go through all of this all over again. There are only twelve episodes left. Let’s focus on some of these characters unless the new characters are critical to the end of the story. With Sheeran, we don’t think that it was.

Did you see our review of the premiere episode?

If now, we suggest that you head over to the link here and take a look at it right now. We’ll, of course, continue to bring you more coverage on the next episode as we get closer to it airing. (Photo: HBO.)