Game Of Thrones Season 4 is just around the corner, and the events of Season 3 have left Jaime Lannister with the most improbable new development: a friend.
However, speaking exclusively to SciFiNow, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau tells us that Jaime hasn’t changed so much as remembered who he used to be.
“He still wants to sleep with his sister!” he laughs, before reminding us that Jaime’s shocking defenestration of Bran Stark in the very first episode is less shocking in the character’s point of view.
“It seems like a huge change, and there are obviously some changes in him. It’s all about point of view. If you were told before the scene in episode one where he’s having sex with Cersei and he pushes Bran out of the window, if you had the information before that, yes it’s his sister, but it’s true love, it’s the love of his life and they desperately want to be together, it’s horrible but it’s romantic love.
“If you knew that and you were then told that there’s a horrible little evil boy climbing the walls, if that little horrible boy tells anyone what he saw they would have to kill Cersei’s lovely children, and she would die, the love of his life would die, and he would probably die as well. If you were told that, you would think differently, maybe.”
Protecting Cersei and her children is one thing, but Game Of Thrones Season 3 saw Jaime jump into a bear pit to protect Brienne.
“He does something because he’s all about loyalty and family and he wants to protect the people he loves,” Coster-Waldau explains. “And that goes through, I think, to Brienne. The fact that he meets this woman is huge for him, because he’s forced to spend so much time with this woman and that does have a huge effect on him. For the first scene, he does something for someone outside of his family. He risks everything for this woman.”
With his hand severed, we saw Jaime tell the story of how he got his name as the Kingslayer, and it made the character more human than he’s ever been.
“I think the biggest change is the fact that he loses his identity in many ways and he has to reevaluate who he is and rediscover himself. That goes back to the scene they have together in the bath tub where he reveals this huge secret that he’s carried since he was 16, he killed the mad king and he actually sees that as his proudest moment. It’s been the defining moment of his life, he was the Kingslayer, he was not the honourable man, and he tells of all people this woman because I think that they have connected, that he sees himself in her.”
“I think the big question of course is what happens when he gets back to King’s Landing, that’s where you’re going to find out how it’s actually changed him. I think at the end of Season 3 something has changed, but he doesn’t know what that is and he surprises himself. He doesn’t understand why he goes back and rescues her from that bear, but he does it because he just acts, he does’t know why, that’s his nature. It ends with her saying ‘Why did you do that?’ And he doesn’t answer. I think at that point, he doesn’t know and that surprises him.”
“She’s such a pain, but I think the fact is that he sees himself in that woman, he sees what he used to be when he was younger, the honesty and the loyalty and the trustworthiness.”
