For “Game of Thrones” fans worrying that they haven’t seen John Bradley in a while, don’t worry: He was busy trading dragons and swords for screen time withHalle Berry and Jennifer Lopez.
The British actor’s “happy” he has two big new movies arriving in as many weeks, Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi action film “Moonfall” (in theaters now) and the romantic comedy “Marry Me” (in theaters and on Peacock Friday), since “it looks like I’ve been doing nothing at all for nearly three years now. Like I’ve gone into involuntary retirement after ‘Game of Thrones,’ never to be heard of again.”
“Marry Me” features Bradley as Collin Calloway, the hard-working manager of mega pop star Kat Valdez (Lopez) when she unexpectedly marries a concert-goer (Owen Wilson). And in “Moonfall,” Bradley plays conspiracy theorist KC Houseman, who teams up with a pair of astronauts (Berry and Patrick Wilson) to save the world when the moon is knocked out of orbit.
Bradley, 33, immediately connected with KC, an isolated man “completely adrift and alone” who finds his purpose, the actor says. “In the middle of the pandemic and the climate crisis, it’s a bit of a lesson as to how unassuming everyday people can have a hand in doing big things if they are determined, stick to their guns and just don’t give in.”
Whether you’re a hardcore “Thrones” aficionado or a new Bradley fan, here are five things to know about the music-adoring, soccer-loving Brit:
‘Marry Me’ turned out to be the career reset he needed
“Thrones” was Bradley’s first acting gig after graduating from drama school in 2010, but after eight seasons playing goodhearted academic Samwell Tarly on the hit fantasy show, “I just wanted to stay away from that for a while,” he says. With “Marry Me,” “I don’t think you could get further away from ‘Game of Thrones’ if you tried.”
And Bradley took a lesson in work ethic from his iconic co-star, Lopez: “She’s a complete triple threat, she’s a phenomenon. And for everything she’s achieved, she’s still determined to get every single dance step, every single note and every single line of the scene as good as it could possibly be.”
His ‘Moonfall’ stunts were worse than ‘Thrones’
While Bradley worked a lot on green-screen sets for “Moonfall” space scenes, the on-Earth stuff was rougher, especially one sequence where tidal waves cause a flood in a hotel lobby that KC has to escape. And that meant working on a set filled with freezing cold water. “Every time we introduced new water, more filth would rise up off the carpet and it went a healthy shade of chocolate brown,” Bradley says. “And I swallowed gallons of it as I was pretending to drown.”
When making “Thrones,” spending a December in Iceland with minus 35-degree temperatures was tough, but otherwise he skipped much of the “big stunt stuff” playing a character who wasn’t “very good at things,” he quips. “I was in hotels in Belfast and Kit Harington and everybody would be leaving to do stunt rehearsals, and I’d be like, ‘I’ll see you later! I’m just gonna chill around here for the rest of the day.’ ”
Bradley reteams with old friends for new project
“Thrones” creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff gave Bradley his start and also cast him in the upcoming Netflix sci-fi drama series “The Three-Body Problem,” now in production about humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization. “It’s one of the most unfilmable scripts I’ve ever read and if they can pull it off, it could change all the rules of TV all over again,” Bradley says.
He can’t say anything about his character, though Bradley recalls Weiss and Benioff stating “it’s the closest to my own personality” he’s ever played. “When somebody tells you that and then you read it, you get a sense of what they think about you. I’m not taking grave offense to it but when I first started reading, I was like, ‘Oh. Alright then. Fine.’ ”
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He lives for the Beatles and Premier League soccer
When it comes to his major cultural loves, Bradley keeps it local: He roots for hometown club Manchester United and adores the Fab Four who came out of Liverpool just 30 miles away from his birthplace. “It’s just pure magic: There’s nobody else like them and I don’t know if there ever will be,” says Bradley, currently on his fourth cycle through Peter Jackson’s six-hour Beatles documentary“Get Back.”
The actor especially appreciates Paul McCartney’s penchant for writing songs that “have a melodic twist to them where you think you know the way a melody’s gonna play out and at the very last second, a note or a chord comes into it that completely changes it and takes it somewhere really surprising.”
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But Bradley has a bone to pick with ‘Ted Lasso’
Bradley connects on an emotional level with the Emmy-winning series about Jason Sudeikis’ American football coach managing an English soccer squad. “It makes people feel happy and very few things are so sort of steadfast in their aim.” However, as a “dyed-in-the-wool football fan,” Bradley has some notes for the “Lasso” folks.
One aspect he can’t get past: The three most die-hard AFC Richmond supporters watch the games at the local pub instead of live in the nearby stadium. “If you care the most about the club and you are willing to swear at the TV and invest that much passion in it, just go! You all live in the same town,” Bradley says with a laugh. “I love (the show)and I wish I didn’t have these things on my mind.”
