‘The sword swung so close to her head!’ What it’s like to commit one of TV’s most unforgivable murders

Talk about being a pantomime villain. It’s unpopular enough playing the antagonist who murders a long-running TV character. When your victim is a fan favourite, though, you risk being vilified even more. So what’s it like being the ultimate baddy and breaking viewers’ hearts? Do they get booed in the street or trolled online? We asked five actors who killed off beloved characters – from Spooks to The Sopranos, Wolf Hall to Westeros – about their experiences … ‘After the Red Wedding, people walked away from me backwards’ Michael McElhatton played Roose Bolton, who stabbed Robb Stark in the infamous Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones “It was 13 years ago but I vividly remember filming the Red Wedding. How could you not? We shot it over five days, all blocked out like a play, which never happens in film or TV. Three major characters got killed: Talisa (Oona Chaplin), Robb (Richard Madden) and Catelyn (Michelle Fairley). It’s a huge turning point and where Game of Thrones truly took off. In fact, that was the part of the books that convinced David Benioff and DB Weiss to acquire the TV rights. They said ‘As long as they don’t cancel us before the Red Wedding, we’re fine!’ I was in the makeup trailer next to this guy who was dressed as a lowly serf. As we walked to the set, I introduced myself and he said: ‘I’m Will, I’m playing one of the musicians.’ I figured he was a specialist in Elizabethan instruments or something. I said: ‘Are you a musician in real life? Are you in a band? Having any luck?’ He said, ‘We’re doing all right.’ ‘What are you called?’ ‘Coldplay.’ I went: ‘Oh god!’ It was Will Champion, the drummer. I spent the next four days trying to ingratiate myself. It’s magnificent TV. Catelyn notices the door being locked. The music changes. Then she realises I’m wearing chainmail under my shirt and all hell kicks off. I stab Robb in the heart but they did that digitally. I just had the handle of a dagger in my hand. I was right up in Richard’s face, watching him die. Brutal. There’s a great meme of me doing it with Trump. I snarl ‘The Lannisters send their regards’ and had no idea it would become a standout quote. It’s on T-shirts, tote bags, all sorts. I wish I got royalties but it’s George RR Martin’s line. A friend was in LA and a driver had run into the back of another car. There was a huge dent and they’d written in it ‘The Lannisters send their regards.’ I was tickled by that. When the episode aired, my phone lit up with messages saying: ‘What have you done?’ I was doing a play in London and saw an entire tube carriage where every passenger was reading a free newspaper with four pages of graphic Red Wedding photos inside. I stood by the train door, pulling my baseball cap down. I hadn’t appreciated the enormity of it as a cultural moment until then. People didn’t treat me differently but they did tend to walk away backwards!” ‘Shooting Adriana was my hardest scene ever’ Musician Steven Van Zandt played Silvio Dante, who whacked mob wife Adriana La Cerva in the woods in season five of The Sopranos “The way I got the role is ridiculous. [Sopranos creator] David Chase was a fan of our music, saw me make a speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and offered me a part. I said: ‘I’d feel guilty taking an actor’s job.’ He said: ‘That’s OK, I’ll write a new character for you.’ Casting me was a ballsy move. David handed me a gift by making me an actor. It changed my career. My whole life had been research. I’d read every mob book, seen every gangster movie and grew up around scary guys in our neighbourhood. I wrote a backstory for Silv and made him nostalgic for the good old days when guys didn’t rat each other out. That’s why he had that 50s hairstyle. I wasn’t originally meant to be Tony Soprano’s consigliere but the writers picked up on my relationship with [actor] Jimmy Gandolfini and made me underboss. I knew that dynamic well because I had a similar relationship with Bruce [Springsteen] in the E Street Band. His trusted right-hand man. Silvio had ascended to executive level and was only brought in for special hits. That was the case with Adriana. It was the hardest scene I’ve ever done. My whole life’s been dedicated to stopping bullies. That’s why I took on the South African government [founding Artists United Against Apartheid]. Putting my hands on a woman and roughing her up was difficult. Any violence towards women is repulsive to me. But Drea [de Matteo, who played Adriana] said: ‘This is my last scene, let’s make it a good one. Don’t go easy on me.’ Afterwards, we lay down in the leaves and I said: ‘You just won your first Emmy.’ And she did. Knocking off regulars were the hardest days on set. It was normally a wonderful atmosphere but suddenly people were bickering and uptight. It was the same when we killed Vinny Pastore [who played Big Pussy] on the boat. Those were the two most emotional days in the whole eight years. To be respectful, we don’t show the moment of Adriana’s death, you just hear gunshots. It sparked conspiracy theories about whether he’d really killed her. Jay Leno asked me on his talkshow. I said: ‘What do you think I was doing in the woods, shooting squirrels?’ Just to show how sick the world is, after the episode aired, a few people came up and said: ‘Good job, man, she deserved that.’ I’d be like: ‘What’s the matter with you? She was a perfectly innocent girl.’ But for every one of those, hundreds more were heartbroken. Eventually justice was done and Silvio himself got shot. I didn’t want to die, so David left me in a coma as a compromise. I would have survived for a sequel, trust me! Even today in meetings, I wish I was Silvio. I’d get a lot more done!” ‘It was like a western on the streets of Belfast’ Art Campion played gangster Sully, who gunned down PC Gerry Cliff in the debut series of Belfast police drama Blue Lights “The shootout was like a western. We cordoned off a whole street and had weapons training. I’ve been around a few guns for gigs and the blast off a blank is powerful. I’m very aware of how lethal they can be. If you put a blank in front of an orange, it’ll explode. An armourer would pop in between takes, show me the barrel and we’d be good to go. I wore squibs under my hoodie, so when Sully shot Gerry [played by Richard Dormer], then got gunned down by Jen [fellow officer, played by Hannah McClean], she fired in a certain rhythm – bang-bang, bang-bang, bang – which put me down against a lamppost. It’s handy because you can feel the squibs going off and it helps you jolt. I deliberately didn’t place my head very well, to make it look realistically clumsy but ended up lying there quite a while, regretting that. I was moving house at the time and remember lying in a pool of blood, haggling on the phone with a builder. I’d just played Father Peter in Derry Girls, so it was nice to show people that I’m not only a priest with existential doubts. I can also be a cocaine-sniffing, gun-toting lunatic! Viewers had got attached to Gerry. He was the heart of the show, a lovable character, so they were genuinely affected by his death. That’s what good dramas do. I’m still not over Omar being shot in The Wire. You never know which shows are going to blow up. Blue Lights is a big deal now. I wish I wasn’t dead! I’m in good company, though. A year later, Richard got shot by Eddie Redmayne in The Day of the Jackal. Me and Eddie should meet for a pint and compare notes.” ‘Nicola Walker was the perfect castmate to kill!’ Tom Weston-Jones played Russian agent Sasha Gavrik, who killed Spooks favourite Ruth Evershed in the last ever episode of the BBC spy saga “Spooks was my first job out of drama school. I went all in with the Russian accent and had this Justin Bieber-esque hairstyle. As they cut it in, I went: ‘He doesn’t look very dangerous.’ They were like: ‘That’s why it’ll be a surprise when Sasha does what he does.’ It was quite intimidating coming into a close-knit cast and crew but Nicola Walker was so welcoming, any sense of guilt about killing her immediately evaporated. She made light of it all and was the perfect castmate to kill! The stabbing had a tragic happenstance to it. It wasn’t premeditated, it was almost a crime of passion. It felt like a shock twist, which made it all the more effective. I stabbed her with a shard of broken glass, which was fake – made of plastic. I was trying to kill Harry [Pearce, played by Peter Firth] but Ruth got in the way and bled out from her belly. Who knows how fans would have responded if I’d got Harry instead? Imagine if it had been both of them! I probably wouldn’t be here today. Meanwhile, my character gets shot in the leg and carted off. My father was convinced I got shot in the arse, which amused him. Everyone came down to the location, even people who weren’t working that day, just to be there for the goodbye. It felt very special. The tears were genuine from a lot of people. There was a real sense of an ending. Ruth and Harry had this semi-platonic love story for nine series and I ruined it. Fans clung to the hope that she wasn’t really dead. People would say: ‘That’s not it, though, is it? Surely that’s not the end?’ People on the tube shook their fists at me. I joined Twitter a few years later and people messaged me saying: ‘You know what you did!’ They were cross but in a tongue-in-cheek way. Every so often, people still say: ‘You’re the one who killed Ruth.’ If you make millions of viewers cry, you’ve done the job right. Long may it continue. Perhaps they’ll be blaming me for the rest of my life.” ‘Everyone looked worried. Just as well Claire Foy was blindfolded’ Philippe Spall played the Calais Executioner, who beheaded Anne Boleyn at the climax of series one of period drama Wolf Hall “I’m half-French, so when Wolf Hall needed a Calais swordsman, I was called in to meet director Peter Kosminsky. It was written in Hilary Mantel’s novel that Anne Boleyn’s executioner was almost balletic. They wanted a swift, merciful death. The fight director showed me medieval woodcuts of him in these flamenco-like poses. There’s theatricality to it – unlike poor old Thomas More, who just got his head lopped off with an axe. We shot the beheading at Dover Castle, which stood in for the Tower 0f London, in mid-July. You’d expect it to be lovely and sunny but the gods went: ‘We’re not having that.’ It suddenly turned into this dull day with wind whistling around the courtyard, which added to the spooky atmosphere. The weapon was extraordinary – a huge sword, handmade for the show, as close to the original specifications as they could. It was ridiculously heavy. Afterwards, they went: ‘Maybe we should have done it in aluminium?’ I trained out the back of my house with a scaffolding pole to get used to its weight. I remember my neighbours going: “All right there, Phil? Just practising?” Swinging it at Claire Foy became an interesting exercise. For the first few takes, they said: ‘Stop your swing at the top of the arc,’ but the director of photography said: ‘No, he needs to swing it near her head.’ Everyone looked worried but we got something that looked very realistic. Probably just as well that Claire was blindfolded, so she didn’t realise quite how close I was getting. I slip off my shoes, so she won’t hear me coming. Another period detail was that the headsman stands to one side and says ‘Apportez l’épée’ (‘Bring me the sword’). Anne speaks French, so she snaps her head round, exposing the tendons in her neck for a clean cut. I dance across to the other side and swing. The prosthetic head was fitted with a pump, so fake blood gushed out of the severed neck over Anne’s maids. They wrap up the head and carry off the body because they don’t want the men to touch her. I was lucky that in the sequel, The Mirror and the Light, I haunt Thomas Cromwell’s nightmares. They used old footage but it’s great to pop up in both series. It’s not the only royal TV death I’ve been involved in. A few years later, I was the Parisian dogwalker in The Crown who calls 999 when Diana’s car crashes. Royalty, death, French – that seems to have become my niche!”