Ed Sheeran scores Game of Thrones role, No. 1 album
British singer’s album, Divide, most popular premiere of 2017
Your favourite British troubadour is heading to Westeros.
Singer Ed Sheeran will guest star on the upcoming seventh season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss revealed Sunday at a South by Southwest panel in Austin, Texas.
Getting Sheeran on the show has been a years-long effort for Benioff and Weiss, who originally extended an invitation to the singer to appear in the third season.
No details were offered about Sheeran’s role, but given the show’s history with musical cameos, including Sigur Ros and Of Monsters and Men, Sheeran will likely be a background player. The fantasy series returns July 16. Benioff and Weiss also confirmed a few details on the eighth and final season of the show, noting that it will have six episodes, down from the usual 10, putting the show at 73 hours total.
“From the beginning. we’ve wanted to tell a 70-hour movie. It will turn out to be a 73-hour movie, but it’s stayed relatively the same of having the beginning, middle and now we’re coming to the end,” Benioff said.
Thrones won’t be the first onscreen gig for Sheeran, 26, who had a recurring role on FX’s short-lived medieval drama The Bastard Executioner in 2015. He also made a cameo in last year’s Bridget Jones’ Baby with Renée Zellweger.
Sheeran is currently riding high off the success of his third album. Divide, which debuted atop the Billboard 200 album chart this week, Billboard announced Sunday. The album notched the biggest bow of 2017 so far with 451,000 equivalent album units sold, the highest sales week for an album since rapper J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only in late December.
Sheeran, whose Shape of You has ruled the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for six weeks, will embark on his North American tour June 29 in Kansas City, Mo.
It includes a July 7 show at the Air Canada Centre.