OWEN TEALE
The Tony-winning Welsh actor, 56, whose defiant Alliser Thorne was ordered hanged by a resurrected Jon Snow in Season 6 of Game of Thrones, tells WHO’S Cynthia Wang he is happy now to save lives as Dr Chad Berger on Pulse (Thursdays, 8.30 PM, on ABC and ABC iview).
So is this your first medical drama? It is! It’s like you’ve got to tick your boxes, haven’t you, as an actor. He’s head of nephrology at the hospital in our story and I’ve learnt a lot. Have you become more of a hypochondriac? I scare myself with thoughts about all the things that can go wrong and how important your kidneys are, but I enjoy the psych. You get a little
insight into a world that you might have never known about. What did you like most about filming in Sydney? I love the romance of watching the ferries and being on the ferry. I’ve done the ferry to Manly so many times. What I love is that there is always going to be a percentage of tourists who have never been before. As the ferry pulls out of Circular Quay, all is revealed before them. You became a pop-culture figure as a member of
the Night’s Watch on Game of Thrones. When you take a photograph [with fans], they say, “Oh no, don’t smile.” I say, “Would you prefer me to grab hold of you as if I’m going to kill you?” “yeah, yeah, do that. Do that.” And I’ll even do the line, “For the Watch.” And they’ll suddenly run it on Youtube and they love it. And you’re friends with Kit Harington [Jon Snow]? I suppose it could go one of two ways, couldn’t it? It started for us in 2010. It’s a long time now. I look forward very much to having one of our reunions. Do people freak out? When they say, “But you two can’t sit together and have a drink,” we have to remind people it’s a story. They get terribly involved in it.