Joe Dempsie, the actor behind Gendry on Game of Thrones, knows he only has himself to blame for those rowing jokes.
King Robert’s bastard son disappeared in season 3 of the hit HBO fantasy, last seen in a rowboat making his way to King’s Landing. So when Dempsie fired off a tweet after season 4 ended — “still rowin’” — the meme spread like, well, wildfire.
“It became my daily life,” he tells EW with a laugh, ahead of Thrones’ much anticipated eighth and final season. “There was no escaping it.”
Still rowin'...#GoT
— Joe Dempsie (@joedempsie) June 18, 2014
Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss promised Dempsie that they planned to bring Gendry back, but as seasons passed, he wondered whether it would really happen — until he got the call for season 7. “It almost felt like a new job because the influence and the impact of the show changed so much over those years,” he explains. “It was like getting a call out of the blue, saying, ‘Hey, so do you fancy stepping into the biggest TV show on the planet?’”
Returning to Westeros also brought new challenges: Season 7 found Gendry venturing north of the Wall with his new warhammer, and the stunt team told him to build his strength by practicing with a real hammer. He did — only to be handed a fake foam hammer when he got to set.
“I spent probably three months like a psychopath in my garden, swinging a sledgehammer around,” he says, laughing. “So I was the strongest I’ve ever been, trying to make a foam hammer look heavy.” Hey, it beats rowing.
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