Game of Thrones: Newbies Are Coming – Enzo Cilenti 

So, Stannis looks set to storm Winterfell, Jon’s off up North to fetch the Wildlings, Cersei’s in a cell and Samwell Tarly is officially a man. With only three episodes to go until season five of

, set in motion what we now expect to be a grand finale.

Finally, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister have come face to face, an outcome which new kid on the Meereen block, slave trader Yezzan zo Qaggaz, played an instrumental part in.

Last night’s episode has marked yet more departures from the books, proving yet again that David Benioff and D. B Weiss really have taken the reigns, and whatever we think we might know, we really don’t. Not only have Daenerys and Tyrion not yet met in the books, but according to the words of George RR Martin, Yezzan zo Qaggaz is morbidly obese and smells of urine. It may have come as a surprise to many readers therefore when a slim, odor-free Italian by the name of Enzo Cilenti made his debut in the show last night in that role.

Ahead of his character entering the show, we sat down with Cilenti to discuss reactions to Sansa’s wedding night and what it was like to work with Iain Glen and Peter Dinklage.

How do you feel ahead of the episode airing in which you make your debut?

I’m really excited about it. I’ve been talking about it a lot in interviews, which makes you remember the fondness you have for the job. It’s been really lovely to be reminded of it and to travel back to that time.

You don’t really fit the description given of Yezzan in the book…

No! I read the description of Yezzan when I was doing some research before the audition and thought, “I don’t know why I’m being considered!” But then I stopped being stupid; you have very clever people running the show and part of the joy for those who have read the books is that it sometimes diverts away from the books and sometimes it sticks to them – there’s always a really good element of surprise. David and Dan are incredibly creative and aren’t constrained by thinking in a very narrow fashion. I stopped worrying about not being able to get the job because I wasn’t obese and didn’t smell of urine. Physically it’s a departure. He’s very calculating, essentially he’s an illegal operator who has no qualms about sending people to a horrible death in order to fill his pockets. I would like to think, with the blessing of Dan and David, he became more humorous; he had a clownish element. We ended up undermining the brutishness of the character in the book, which was tremendous fun and something I wasn’t expecting.

You’ve worked on the sets of big Hollywood blockbusters and smaller-scale British dramas. Where does

You can’t compare it. The jobs that are the same are the ones that aren’t quite so good. The ones that are great to work on and really good fun are incredibly different and can’t be compared. It’s a proper team sport; you have every department doing amazing work to create something. While in some ways the actors are the most visible part of that scene, a lot of the day is spent watching hair, make-up, costume, the art department, stunt people, director do their work to make it as easy as possible for you to do your bit, and when you feel like you’ve delivered, you feel like you’ve done everyone else’s work justice. That’s the common denominator, everything else is different: where you are, who you’re working with, the scale of the show… That enjoyment comes from the feeling that it is a team sport. That’s what I enjoy most about doing job.

You were working predominantly with Iain Glen and Peter Dinklage who, having worked on the show for years, already know their characters inside out. As a newcomer to the show, are you given time to settle in and work on the character?

You got the job based on what you did in the audition, so that’s your starting point, and you have to have the confidence to start with that on set. Both Iain and Peter were so lovely. I’ve worked with Iain on a number of occasions before and Peter and I have a mutual friend. Straight away I knew I was in really good hands. They couldn’t have been more generous in every single way. That allowed me to relax. The character did change, he ended up going in a direction that I hadn’t been expecting. The fact that that was encouraged is testament to the producers and Miguel the director.

What was the most surprising thing about working on the show?

The warmth [of the people]; they’ve been doing it for five seasons and I was yet another actor, yet I didn’t feel anything other than incredibly welcome. I felt like I’d been accepted into the cool gang, which has never happened to me before! They were exited about the character. Even though it’s a huge production, that didn’t get in the way of it being a very organic process. I didn’t feel like I was there to do a job. It was a really lovely experience working with the producers and a great script and coming up with something that wasn’t necessarily on the page. It was lovely.

Do you feel more drawn to doing TV now that people are willing to invest more time and money into it?

As long as there’s great writing, the medium doesn’t really matter. What’s ironic is that HBO and

are the main architects for bringing the quality that we used to associate with movies to television.

has a reputation for containing a lot of violence and nudity. As a father, do you worry about what’s shown on television?

My children are very young, however I’m not a big believer in censoring what they watch, to a degree. As long as you’re there and they can talk about it, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’d rather they watch it in the house when we were there and we knew what they were watching. I learnt everything from telly and watching loads of stuff I shouldn’t have been watching when I was a kid, and that’s why I am how I am! The subject of rape has come up very recently and there’s been a wide range of reactions to a specific scene. My wife and I talked about it at length. If it provokes sensible discussion then fine, it’s just reactionary maniacs putting pen to paper or going on Twitter and talking rubbish about it; that’s the problem. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. As long as a subject is handled in the right way, it shouldn’t be off limits. I’m not here to decide whether it was handled well or not, I wouldn’t comment on that.

Your wife is also an actress. Does having the same profession make things easier?

It does! Just from practical things like having someone really good to read lines with, but also just that level of understanding when you go away for however long and you know what they’re going through. If things aren’t going great you can have that conversation and understand each other and hopefully, at times, be able to help. We have a short hand. On a practical basis it’s great, but also we both love what we do and if something great happens that day she’s someone I know I can talk to about it, who understands it.

Don’t forget to read our interviews with Game of Thrones newbies Alexander Siddig, DeObia Oparei, Jessica Henwick and Toby Sebastian.

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