{"id":40534,"date":"2015-04-21T10:41:29","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T17:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=40534"},"modified":"2015-04-21T10:41:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T17:41:29","slug":"siddig-getting-and-playing-the-role-of-martell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2015\/04\/siddig-getting-and-playing-the-role-of-martell\/","title":{"rendered":"Siddig: Getting And Playing The Role Of Martell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40535\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/SiddigGOT-020315.gif\" alt=\"SiddigGOT-020315\" width=\"580\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Deep Space Nine<\/em>&#8216;s <strong>Alexander Siddig<\/strong> is now appearing on <em>Game of Thrones<\/em> as Doran Martell and the actor explained how he got the job as well as what fans can expect from the character.<\/p>\n<p>Note that there might be spoilers for the show in the article.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->According to Siddig, the offer to work in the hit series landed on his agent&#8217;s desk. &#8220;It actually came across my agent&#8217;s desk,&#8221; he said. Very rarely do I ask to be on a show these days. It&#8217;s not because I&#8217;m too grand or anything but I just don&#8217;t think of it. It never occurs to me. Besides, I think you get more chances of getting on a show if you get asked rather than asking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Siddig came in for the audition, and watching others perform helped him get a handle on what was expected of him. &#8220;While I was auditioning, I got to see Pedro perform as [Doran&#8217;s] brother and that gave me all the information I needed,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I knew this guy was coming from a passionate family. They have a lot of Spanish in them, and obviously Pedro is Chilean. So, I unashamedly copied everything I could about him with a few of the things that are unique to my character overlaid. Doran couldn&#8217;t be quite as dramatic or quite as romantic because my character is the ruler and [Oberyn] wasn&#8217;t a ruler. Oberyn could afford to misbehave in a way that my character cannot. There&#8217;s a difference there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>How does Doran&#8217;s disability affect how Siddig plays the character? &#8220;I was really excited by that, not just from an actor&#8217;s point of view,&#8221; said Siddig, &#8220;because it&#8217;s always exciting to play under some strict limitation &#8211; but it was really, could I possibly figure out a way to give this guy gravity, authority and a sense of romance? This race of people seems to imbue that in their nature which is quite different from the other families who can be quite stern or mysterious. I was hoping I could do that in a wheelchair, and it was a great challenge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For the character though, being disabled is a liability. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think he gets out very much, because he&#8217;s a little bit ashamed of the fact that he&#8217;s meant to be a masculine guy in a really macho culture,&#8221; said Siddig. &#8220;The fact he can&#8217;t get out of his chair is a real disability to him. I think it forces him to be more philosophical, or at least attempting to be wiser. Where he ends up, I have absolutely no idea. But I&#8217;m playing him right now as being a pretty equivocal, pragmatic, wise ruler who doesn&#8217;t want to rush to judgment and, more importantly, doesn&#8217;t want to subject his whole kingdom to a state of war. But that is obviously in the cards, and goodness knows there&#8217;s enough reason for it with what happened to his daughter and his brother being slaughtered abroad. It&#8217;s going to be very difficult to decide what to do and he&#8217;s making a lot of enemies by taking his time and not just rushing out there. I hope he comes off as wise, but I&#8217;m smart enough to know the producers could do a reverse turn on him at anytime and turn him into a monster. And that&#8217;s OK. I&#8217;m ready for that as it would be good fun.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deep Space Nine&#8216;s Alexander Siddig is now appearing on Game of Thrones as Doran Martell&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413],"tags":[7568,8433,3144],"class_list":["post-40534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-martell","tag-siddig"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a>","tag_info":"Cast &amp; Crew","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40536,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40534\/revisions\/40536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}