When fired Game of Thrones actor Alexander Siddig suggested HBO was behind episode leaks

Actor Alexander Siddig, who played Prince Doran Martell on Game of Thrones, didn’t take to kindly to being killed off on the HBO show, going so far as to spout conspiracy theories after his run concluded. Doran Martell was killed in the first episode of season six, but the actor said that he was originally contracted for four.

Siddig, who also starred in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, told StarTrek.com in a 2016 interview that contracting him for four episodes but killing him after one didn’t make financial sense to him. “If they were going to kill me off at the end of the last season, why would they contract me for those four episodes? Because it costs them money whether I do them or not, so it’s not great business sense to do it just in case,” he said.

He said that creators David Benioff and DB Weiss called him during off-season to inform him about his character’s fate. As a possible explanation behind his removal, he hinted at maybe saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. “Something happened; I have no idea what,” he said. “There was an enormous amount of fan excitement when I got named to be on the show, and everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, yes, Doran Martell. He’s going to be great as Doran Martell.’ That might have been the kiss of death. Maybe they didn’t want quite that much attention on that character. Maybe they thought, ‘Well, let’s prove that we’re going to stray from the books. We’re going to do something else, and he will be our first example of that.’ Or maybe I just screwed up. Maybe I said the wrong thing to the wrong person.”

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Siddig took it a step further, suggesting that it’s ‘all games’ behind-the-scenes, and that the episode leaks that happened on Game of Thrones could have been a doing of HBO. He said, “Everybody is paranoid about some leak on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube. So I think the secrecy is kind of understandable, but also there is an element of hype about it that makes it… the more secretive it is, the more special it is. And certainly Game of Thrones plays that. They misinform the crowd and they give them tidbits to send them in wrong directions.”

Siddig added, “So, for example, last season, I believe that the first few episodes were stolen and downloaded online, and everybody got to see them before the show actually aired, and everybody was furious at HBO and whatnot. I don’t know if you remember. I am almost positive that those four episodes were leaked by HBO themselves. So there is an enormous amount of spin going on. I can’t tell you that for sure; that’s just my opinion, but it’s games; everybody’s playing these games.”

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