Liam Cunningham chats Davos Seaworth and ‘Game of Thrones’

by W. Andrew Powell
Liam Cunningham

Irish actor Liam Cunningham has an impressive resume, with nearly a hundred film and television credits since he started acting in the early nineties. After the show’s massive international success, however, he is most immediately recognizable as the charming reformed smuggler, Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones–the right-hand-man of one of the would-be monarchs of Westeros, Stannis Baratheon.

Visiting Toronto to talk about the fourth season of the series, Cunningham is also in town today to walk the red carpet tonight for the kick-off of Game of Thrones the Exhibition at TIFF Bell Lightbox, which runs from May 14 to 18 before it departs for Vancouver, and cities around the world.

Sitting down to talk earlier today, Cunningham spoke about the recent sixth episode, “The Laws of Gods and Men”, including Davos’ seemingly unwavering faith in Stannis, and the fact that Davos is one of the rare almost-good guys with true conviction on Game of Thrones, among so many characters who would, as Cunningham joked, “sell their mothers… for power”.

“Yeah [good guys]”, Cunningham said, “they’re kind of few and far between on the show, aren’t they?”

“He’s a really interesting… if he wasn’t in the ‘merde’ that he’s in on a regular basis,” Cunningham said of Davos, “then he wouldn’t, possibly, be that interesting to play, but… he’s got that solid, instinctual backbone of decency and loyalty and principal. What’s interesting is the drama he gets into when the guy he’s aiming all that principal stuff at wants to kill him–put him in prison, all that–and he still sticks by the rules.”

“In a sense, you kind of look at him and go, ‘You know what? If the crap hit the fan, that’s what I’d like my thing to be.’ That I’d be kind of a straight shooter. And I wouldn’t sell out. He doesn’t sell out. That’s one of his more attractive qualities. He doesn’t do what quite a few of them would do… and I kind of like that about him.”

“Generally speaking,” Cunningham said, “the kind of good guys are not that interesting to play. The baddies are much more interesting to play usually, and I’ve done a lot of them.”

Game of Thrones airs Sunday at 9:00 PM [ET/MT] on HBO, and HBO Canada.

Watch the interview with Liam Cunningham:

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