Game of Thrones: Newbies Are Coming – DeObia Oparei 

Theatre may be a pastime for some, a profession for others, however for DeObia Oparei, growing up, theatre was a school away from school, a refuge from a broken home.

Oparei was 11 when he was introduced to the Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre (GLYPT) by one of his schoolteachers and discovered acting, “She took me there to see a play and it changed my life”. While he spent his teen years immersed in theatre – after GLYPT he joined the National Youth Theatre before eventually landing his first professional role with the Theatre de Complicite aged 17 – it was in his early 20s that Oparei found himself on the set of David Fincher’s first feature film: the third instalment of the

series. In addition, Oparei’s previous credits include everything from 

 Trained for the stage, yet with the stature of an action hero, he really is quite the chameleon.

as Areo Hotah, the captain of the Dornish guard and right-hand man to Alexander Siddig’s Prince Doran. He is the eyes and ears of Dorne, a region previously unexplored in prior seasons. Each week we are steadily and slowly being introduced to this part of the Seven Kingdoms and those characters who inhabit it: most importantly, the Martels and the Sand Snakes. According to Oparei, the Dornish have a very important role to play in forthcoming episodes, “We discover things in Dorne this season, things that link the Dornish to the Lannisters and everything that’s happening in King’s Landing. It’s very exciting”.

Ahead of episode five airing tonight, we catch up with Oparei to find out more about joining the show…

Your film credits include some huge blockbusters and popular franchises. Did having these experiences make joining such a big-budget show less daunting?

, that was my first film – up until then I had just been doing theatre. It was high pressure ­– that was my first time working at that Hollywood level. However, surprisingly,

was more like going back and doing theatre. David and Dan, there’s something about them that’s so inviting and warm yet at the same time very precise. There’s something about the company… it’s been a fantastic experience.

I was a fan. I hadn’t seen the show, I had read one of the books which was incredible. Towards the end of shooting

was due to start filming and I really wanted to get a meeting for the show. It had been on my radar. I was really miffed that I couldn’t get an audition. Each year, each season it gets more and more successful. I started to see friends who I’d worked with on it. I was like “I’ve got to get on this show!”.

I was an angry kid. I grew up in a Nigerian immigrant family – a very fractured family. I was fostered for a while by an English family, then I went back to my parents. They were at war; my father was violent, they split up and I went to live with my mum in a women’s refuge: I became an angry child. I was full of anger and very disconnected from the world around me. I went to lots of different schools, and then my brothers and I ended up in a children’s home for a while. Once my mum had managed to scrape some money together, we went to live with her, so from the age of about 11 we had some normalcy. It was the first time we went to a school for a full year. At that school there was an amazing woman called Sally Brett. She saw how angry I was, she harnessed that anger, and told me, “You’ve got to go to this place called the Greenwich Young People’s Theatre”. She took me there to see a play and it changed my life.

What was it that made such an impression on you?

I saw people like me on stage talking about things that I was going through: identity, poverty, racism… I was gobsmacked that you could do this and it was called a play. I joined Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre when I was about 11 or 12, and after about a year I would go there every night, bar Sunday. It became my home. It became a refuge for me after a very troubled childhood. I was going through so much. It became my school away from school. I learnt so much; from 12 I was reading Chekhov and other writers. GLYPT was run by an incredible group of creative people who taught me to question. They said “OK, you need to read black writers, James Baldwin, Alice Walker…” – this was when I was 12. GLYPT was so egalitarian. It was in Woolwich, a very working class area. It wasn’t a case where being black or working class meant you played the maid, or the gravedigger in

You decided against going to drama school after joining the National Youth Theatre. What prompted this decision?

At the National Youth Theatre it was all about what we see in society – the Oxbridge boys and the Eaton boys had the leads and the working class boys and the black boys were the servants. I really didn’t like that. As much as I liked my National Youth Theatre experience, it convinced me not to go to drama school. I thought if I did it would just be more of that. Instead I dropped out of school and moved in with a bunch of actors; we were all unemployed. A company called Theatre de Complicite came to Deptford to do an arts programme for the unemployed and I joined it. I did the course, and at the end of it, one of the actors got ill and they asked me if I would fill in and become a professional. I couldn’t believe it, I was 17. I went to Edinburgh and did that show. From there I got into the Royal Shakespeare Company, then The National Theatre. I got great representation and it took off. And that’s really how it began.

You spent time working in Australia, how did the experience compare ? I went to Australia with Complicite and then went back to do

at the Sydney Theatre Company, which Cate Blanchett now runs. I ended up training on the weekends as a dancer. I became a performance artist and a street performer. I wanted to experience what it was like to work as an actor, a performer without a fourth wall. It was a period of creative curiosity. I formed an avant-garde dance group with some contemporary dance group, and that’s when I started to write. I started writing shows, sketches… It was the early/mid 90s. We loved Sandra Bernhard, Keith Haring… It was gender fuck, avant-garde theatre. We would do put on these outrageous, political shows. I had that life for about three/four years in Sydney. And then I came back to London and wanted to get back into theatre and film. I wrote a play and it got put on at the Royal Court. Somehow I managed to get back into film.

My first audition was during the summer or spring of last year. It was a really warm day and I went to the wrong place. I was auditioning for

and I went to the wrong venue. I called my agent who was like “No it’s here, it’s here!” I’m never late for an audition. I was so scared and angry. I was half way down the other side of Oxford Street, and I just had to run. I’m 6”6 and 265 lbs so I sweat a lot. I get there, I walk in and I’m wearing a cut-off denim jacket that reveals my body, which I’d worn to make an impression. I walk in there, sweating, looking really scary – everyone in the waiting room is looking at me. However funnily enough, whoever was auditioning me that day thought that was exactly what they were looking for. It worked out.

Given how loyal the fanbase is, do you feel under pressure to live up to their expectations?

I never feel, as an actor, like I need to try and please a fanbase or seek their approval; if they love it, that’s great. You can only hope that they will, you can’t try and cater your performance to what they want, that’s impossible to do. I’m not nervous, I think because the show is so successful. My experience has been so positive and healthy in a creative way. Working with Indira Varma, Alexander Siddig and David and Dan has been such an incredible experience.

He’s loyal. He reminds me, although George R R Martin wrote very distinct characters, I do see shades of Brienne of Tarth in Areo – his absolute loyalty. Just as Brienne is wedded to her sword, he is wedded to his axe. He describes it in the books as his wife. He’s the eyes and ears of Dorne, and he has to be. He’s like the FBI, he’s the FBI of that world.

Who comes across as being least like their character?

Everyone! Aiden comes across as nothing like Peter Baelish.

By the sounds of things Areo and Doran are quite reliant on each other. How would you describe their relationship?

, the person with the most power is more often than not, in some way, facing a physical challenge – Peter Dinklage’s height, Bran’s inability to walk and relying on Hodor, they express power in some way through this physical frailty. That’s the same in Dorne, power of the Throne lies with Doran, but he relies on Areo to carry that out, both physically and mentally. Areo is, not so much his Hodor because I say more than one word, it’s a bit like that. I’m there knowing his thoughts, I’m by his side. He’s a prince but he’s physically incapacitated. I’m his masculine power in that world. His right hand man.

Do you worry about what the future holds for Areo?

Everyone knows that everyone’s on the chopping block in

. It’s my first season. When a character is killed off, it’s never gratuitous; they do it just right, it’s really good writing. It enhances the show. I don’t want to go. I’d love to come back. I know that I don’t die in the books, but you never know with this show. At the wrap party, there is that sense of “Am I coming back!?”

Game of Thrones airs Mondays, 9pm, on Sky Atlantic.

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