Succession star Brian Cox has revealed that he turned down the opportunity to play Robert Baratheon in Game Of Thrones.
In an excerpt from his new memoir Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, shared by GQ, Cox said he wasn’t familiar with the books, and turned the gig down for financial reasons.
“I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game of Thrones – reason being that every other bugger was – and the answer is, yes,” Cox writes.
“I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season.” Baratheon ended up being portrayed by Mark Addy.
He added: “I know very little about Game of Thrones so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to Google it just in case he was, because I turned it down. Why? Well, Game of Thrones went on to be a huge success and everybody involved earned an absolute fortune, of course.
“But when it was originally offered the money was not all that great, shall we say. Plus I was going to be killed off fairly early on, so I wouldn’t have had any of the benefits of the long-term effects of a successful series where your wages go up with each passing season. So I passed on it, and Mark Addy was gored by the boar instead. (I lied. I did google it.)”
Elsewhere, a new prequel series called House of the Dragon, taking place 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones, is set to air this year.
It will focus on the House of Targaryen and stars Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith and Rhys Ifans.
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