Let it never be said that anyone really mourned over King Joffrey’s death in real life, since to be fair the boy-king was someone that a lot of fans would have loved to curb-stomp in a big way and might have even taken things a little too seriously in real life. But the actor, Jack Gleeson, is apparently coming back to show business after the death of his most notorious character and will be coming back to take part in a comedy of all things. As Jeremy Dick of TVWeb tells it the notion is that Jack, who has been acting since he was 8 years old, needed to step aside from the spotlight and assess whether or not he wanted to come back. There was a bit of a big deal made of this when his character died on Game of Thrones, but it’s easy to think that a person that’s been in the same career for so long might actually want to step out and see what else there is before being locked into something for the rest of their life. Jack has managed to stay in the business in a way on stage but as far as showing up on TV or in the movies, as he did in Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, he stayed away for the past six years and was happy to do so.
But apparently the desire to act is still there as he’s making his way back to TV to star in a comedy that isn’t giving up a lot of details at this point. The main thing to talk about though is just how his Game of Thrones character might have affected him considering that there was no love lost between the average audience member and King Joffrey, even before the spoiled young royal took the crown. There really wasn’t much hope for Joffrey in the books or in the show since he was simply written in to be a spoiled, sadistic man-child that didn’t have any filter between his mouth and the world at large, apart from his uncle Tyrion’s hand from time to time of course. The mere fact that Tyrion smacked the kid around to start with was kind of amusing since Joffrey’s face when this happened was absolutely priceless. But taking it too far and attributing Joffrey’s behavior to Jack’s actual character is something that many people did during the course of the show. Of course such a thing was seen to happen with other actors as well, as Lena Heady was seen as Cersei to those that don’t always tend to parse reality from fiction and other characters were blamed for the wrongs of their characters as well. The truth of the matter is that listening to him speak, Jack is actually a pretty nice guy that just had to step away from acting since he didn’t hate it, but he wasn’t certain that he wanted to keep up with show business at the time.
One can only assume that for child actors it’s a bit rough, not in the sense that some have experienced, but simply because show business doesn’t always allow a kid to just be a kid considering the schedules, the demands, and the needs of the movie or TV show usually have to be put first. Some directors do their absolute best to make sure that the child actors are taken care of and given every chance to just cut loose when they need to, but all in all it does sound quite demanding. Six years ago however Jack was still in his 20s, so the whole child actor phase had come and gone after a while, and it was apparent that he needed a break since he wanted to determine whether this was in fact the life he wanted or not. After so long it does sound as though he might have missed it at least a little bit since he is coming back and likely in a role that will be far less devious and much more likable than his previous character. Of course it wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort to be more likable than King Joffrey since the kid was an absolute sadist and really wasn’t missed after season four. Moving into the later seasons of course the fans had a lot more to worry over when it came to the overall story as it continued to push forward with a narrative that kept changing from the books in a big way.
There are those characters in movies and TV shows that the audience hates with such a blind passion that they can’t wait to see them cast down and finally given their comeuppance, but with Joffrey it was almost like the universe had been delivered a bit of cosmic justice in a way. Neha Prakash of Mashable has more to say about this subject. Now with Jack coming back to the spotlight one can’t help but wonder just how much his past role will affect his chances of gaining the audience’s attention one again.
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