‘Game of Thrones’ season 4 spoilers: Another ‘Rome’ alum enters Westeros

Apparently, “Game of Thrones” loves to pilfer some of their guest stars from the world of “Rome.” Last year, one of the HBO show’s most high-profile additions came with getting Ciaran Hinds, who played the part of Mance Rayder for a surprisingly brief amount of time. (We sat here thinking that he was going to be much more important than he ended up being.)

Meanwhile, the show’s producers have now booked Indira Varma. According to Entertainment Weekly, the actress (also known for Fox’s “Human Target”) is set to play the important role of Ellaria Sand, a sexual and daring woman who is a love of sorts for fellow new character Prince Oberyn Martell, otherwise known as “The Red Viper.” This character was previously announced to be played by Pedro Pascal. There will be quite a bit of material to mine here, which is hardly a shock given that George R.R. Martin writes books that are a stunning 1,000 pages long. But how much footage will there actually be space to include in the season?

For now, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are keeping things simple in their spoiling; Benioff told the magazine the following about some of the challenges that are clearly ahead in what will be a packed ten episodes:

“We got more action, which is obviously more time consuming. It’s a brutal shooting season ahead. But if we can make it through, yeah, I think it’s going to surpass season three. The last 3 episodes, there’s so many scenes we’ve been waiting for so long to do. And it just gets more and more fun to write for these characters. After three years of doing it, we have that much more comfort to make everything uncomfortable for them. We’re very excited for it.”

Filming has already started for season 4, with many scenes either taking place in Iceland or Northern Ireland. For sure, there are also many scenes still to be filmed within various areas of Croatia.

Photo: HBO