Game Of Thrones: The inside story with Bran Stark

Then and now: Bran Stark in season one and season eight

Important: There are NO spoilers for Game of Thrones season eight below, but this article does contain some plot details up to the end of season seven.

Game of Thrones has finally ended, thrilling and disappointing fans in equal measure, and bringing eight years of storylines to a close.

We know who lived, who died, who took power, and who got so angry they signed a petition asking for the whole thing to be filmed again in the precise way they wanted.

The final episode revealed the fates of the remaining Stark children, including Bran Stark, who was played by Isaac Hempstead Wright.

In April this year, Isaac told Radio 1 Newsbeat about his time on the show and how he'd been worrying about being bumped off since season one.

A grisly demise was the first thing they looked for when they received scripts for each series, he says.

He played Bran Stark since the first episode, when he was pushed from a tower and crippled by Jaime Lannister.

Bran had a lucky escape that time, but Isaac was worried about his character being killed in every series since.

"The first thing everyone would do when they got the script was check if they were dying," he says.

"Then when they saw they were safe, they'd check if their friends were dying."

Sorry mate, didn't see you there

And when the axe fell (quite literally, at times) viewing was as rough for the cast as it was for the fans at home.

"You'd always be dreading any particular landmark scene that you knew was coming up, like the Red Wedding."

If you haven't watched the show a) why are you reading this?! And b) that's a major event in season three when some major characters are killed off - most of them were Isaac's on-screen family, the Starks.

"We all knew that was on its way and we were going to lose lovely Michelle [Fairley] and Richard [Madden] and Oona [Chaplin]. That was really sad."

'I nearly quit on the first day'

Isaac turned 20 this year. He's been acting in Game of Thrones since he was 11.

Bran survived unscathed through the first seven seasons, taking an extended trip from his family and home to travel "beyond the wall" and return as the Three-Eyed Raven - a time-travelling psychic who lives for centuries.

But when he started the job, Isaac wasn't sure he could hack the pace.

Robb and Bran Stark with their new direwolf pups in season one

"I can remember the very first day and we shot in this beautiful place called Tollymore Forest, just outside of Belfast. It rained non-stop all day.

"It was the scene where we find the direwolf pups and it was just relentless.

"I remember going back to the hotel with my mum and saying, 'I don't know if I can do this, it's really hard'."

And sure, things brightened up the next day, but the conditions rarely improved for the cast while filming the show for the best part of a decade.

"It was a pretty good introduction to what weather we would be facing for the next nine years of our lives."

Isaac and his on-screen siblings Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams, pictured in 2014, have grown up together on the show

'No sex with your brothers or sisters'

Starting on the show young meant that Isaac was exposed to things most people don't have any knowledge of until much later in life.

Incest, extreme violence and sex are all recurring themes right from the start.

Isaac's character Bran was pushed from a castle tower when he catches brother and sister Jaime and Cersei Lannister having sex in the first episode.

He says there were parts of the early seasons he was too young to watch.

But he says seeing some of the more shocking scenes in the show being filmed was less traumatic for him than they might have been for viewers.

"When you are on set and you see a decapitated body and you see the guy hiding behind the chopping block pumping out blood from the prosthetic it takes all the magic away from it," Isaac says.

"Sex-wise, it just meant my mum would give me endless embarrassing lectures on it, and say things like, 'So darling, no sex with brothers or sisters, that is wrong'."

Cersei and Jaime Lannister back in season one

But while what happened on set didn't have an effect on him, it was what happened off set - back in real life - that made him understand the change Game of Thrones had made.

"University was the first time I was like, 'Oh this is not much fun'," he says.

Isaac dropped out of his maths and music course at Birmingham University in 2017 after just eight weeks because of the attention he received on campus.

"I'd anticipated people would be excited but I didn't see that coming. That was really full-on.

"I couldn't walk out of my halls without having to take a selfie, I was terrified to go out and get drunk because everyone would be watching and taking pictures."

The end is 'terrifying'

But while he's clearly more comfortable in front of TV cameras than being snapped by fans, Isaac's now ready to mark this moment and move on.

"There was talk of everyone who made it from the pilot season to the last to get a tattoo," says Isaac.

"There are only about eight of us from the original pilot who are still alive.

"It is really bizarre - we all feel like we have lived an entire life and career but our lives have just started so it is a pretty amazing position to be in.

"It's really exciting. It is terrifying, but it's exciting."

There were some extra bits from our interview with Isaac that we really didn't want to cut out. Below are some bonus nuggets.

Promise me Ned... that you won't tell me spoilers

Spoilers for Sean Bean

Sean Bean had no idea what happened to his character Ned Stark in series one - until his co-stars broke the news.

"We were shooting the pilot with Jennifer Ehle, who originally played Catelyn Stark and we were just chatting," says Isaac.

"She said, 'Yeah you die at the end of the first book, Sean.'

"He goes, 'What? Do I?' He didn't know he was getting killed off."

His teachers loved it

When filming was over and Isaac went back to school, it wasn't his classmates who were impressed with his TV job - they were too young to care about the land of Westeros.

"It was the teachers who would get really excited," he says.

"I had a really nice English teacher who was a massive Game of Thrones fan - he was really sweet.

"I think it meant I could interact with them as an adult."

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