Joe Dempsie Can't Keep Himself Away from the Zeitgeist

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On Game of Thrones, a show known for killing off beloved characters at any moment, Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry, is humbled just to still be around. “You feel like you’re such a small cog in such a massive machine—and you try not to get too attached,” he jokes, “because job security isn’t too high, is it?”

Halfway through the final season of HBO’s epic fantasy series, the largest question remains unanswered: Who will take control of the Iron Throne and rule over Westeros? Gendry, the unacknowledged bastard son and last descendant of House Baratheon, has become a sleeper fan favorite. In a world where bloodlines dictate your fate, many viewers believe that because his father was previously king, he is the rightful heir. A charming blacksmith who grew up in the slums of the capital city, Gendry traveled all over Westeros, often against his will and completely unaware of his royal blood until season three. After a three-season break, while lying low from a number of people looking to have him killed, he reemerged in season seven, anxious to help old friends. Now, in season eight, he finds himself in yet another new land, ready to fight in a war that puts old rivalries on hold and pits the living versus the dead. As Dempsie says, “Game of Thrones really keeps you on your toes.”

As a child growing up in Nottingham, Dempsie never had any intention of becoming an actor and credits his mother for nurturing his interest. “She always kept an ear out for what I might be interested in in various stages of my childhood and she’d heard me telling a friend of hers that I was enjoying drama at school,” he says, “which my mom found quite strange because I was always quite a sporty kid. I also wasn’t particularly outgoing. I was kind of shy actually.” His mother had heard about a drama organization in town, the Central Junior Television Workshop—a prestigious opportunity for young actors whose alumni include Samantha Morton and Jack O’Connell—and suggested that he audition. “I was up for it until the day of the audition and then I really wasn’t up for it,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to go, but she said, ‘Look, if you don’t enjoy it, you don’t have to go back. But there’s an opportunity to experience something new here. You should always take those opportunities with both hands.’ So I went along and auditioned and it was the most fun I’d had in ages.”

Following a successful audition, Dempsie was admitted to the program, which gave him the chance to develop his skills as an actor, booking several guest spots on British shows while still treating acting as a hobby. It wasn’t until he was contemplating going to university to pursue a degree in history that he decided to take a gap year and turn his pastime into a career. It turned out to be the right decision—he was immediately cast on the ensemble television show Skins, a British series that drew international attention for its unabashed portrayal of hedonistic sixth-form teenagers and brought overnight fame to its cast. “We had no idea,” he says. “As far as we were concerned, we were just making this low-budget teen show.”

Portraying Chris Miles, a sweet, sensitive boy with a voracious appetite for popping pills and partying, Dempsie joined a cast including Nicholas Hoult, Dev Patel, Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Kaluuya, and Hannah Murray. “Skins became like my university experience. I got to move to a new city, I got to live away from home, meet a whole load of new people. But I also got to learn more than I ever have about this job that I decided I wanted to do,” Dempsie recalls. “We’ve all stayed really close, which is kind of rare on filming jobs. I think it’s because of that shared experience back then. When the show came out, the attention it received was quite overwhelming at times. We were being recognized on the street, which none of us, apart from maybe Nick, had ever experienced before, so it felt like we all went through that at the same time so now we’re mates for life.”

Capturing a sense of freedom and irresponsibility found only in youth, Skins was unprecedented in its openness—episodes frequently featured excessive drug use and teenage sexuality, all while exploring themes of abandonment, addiction, and mental health, often shocking viewers while simultaneously rousing a desire to join the party. Dempsie never saw the show as controversial, saying, “other people did that for us,” and instead praises the way it handled sensitive issues. “It just felt different because it was unapologetic and it showed young people indulging in sex and drugs and all the things people generally tend to find quite scary when it comes to young people but it wasn’t consequence-led,” he explains. “It didn’t talk down to its audience and it didn’t patronize its audience.”

With its unique point of view on youth culture, Skins became cemented in the cultural zeitgeist. The show inspired infamous “Skins parties,” known for their recklessness, and spawned an American spinoff on MTV. “I really enjoyed filming the first season of Skins because there’s that real naiveté in all of us,” Dempsie, now thirty-one, says. “We had no idea what we were about to experience, what we were about to make. It’s the same thing with the first season of Game of Thrones.” Pausing for a second, he laughs, “I don’t know how I keep getting myself into these things.”

While Skins captured a cultural moment in the late 2000s, Game of Thrones has dominated this decade, becoming an inescapable obsession. When Dempsie joined the cast in the first season, the show already had a dedicated fanbase carried over from George RR Martin’s fantasy novels, but the impact of the show today goes beyond what most could have been anticipated. Breaking records for both Emmy nominations and viewership—the first episode of the current season attracted 17.4 million viewers, the most ever for an HBO show—the show’s import is felt worldwide. Tourism to Dubrovnik and Northern Ireland, where much of the series was filmed, has increased exponentially, resulting in visitors being turned away from some of the most popular areas due to overcrowding. A class in the invented language Dothraki has been offered at UC Berkeley and fans have shown their support with everything from conventions to tattoos. One reason why the series may resonate so strongly is that Game of Thrones goes beyond the fantasy genre: At its core, it’s a diverse and complex show about power dynamics, loyalty, and survival.

Throughout the first three seasons, many viewers became invested in Gendry’s storyline and expressed puzzlement at his absence in the following seasons, rejoicing when he finally reappeared in season seven. Although Dempsie knew he would be returning to the show, he was never told exactly when that would happen and kept busy working on other projects while he waited. “They told me at the end of season three that the plan was always to bring me back at some point,” he says. “I knew they were sincere when they said that to me, but I was also aware that it’s a massive undertaking for them to put this thing together to weave all these various narrative strands and these amazing, rich characters into something that’s compelling and watchable and satisfying for the audience. If they had turned around after two years and said, ‘You know, we just don’t have time for Gendry,’ I would have understood, so I never took it for granted that I was going back. Then weirdly enough it was at the point where I’d stopped thinking about it and I was perfectly happy and busy doing other stuff and that’s when the phone rang.”

For Dempsie, the return was welcome. “I was watching the show and I missed being a part of it and I maybe had taken it a bit for granted when we were doing seasons one to three,” he says, “so I just went back in season seven determined to enjoy every last minute because I knew what it would be like when it was gone because I had experienced it.”

A few things had changed since he left the show—for one, the secrecy in which the scripts were guarded. After the majority of the seventh-season plot was leaked, security became even tighter for the final six episodes. Dempsie admits to telling only one person any spoilers about this season: his mother. “She’s the best person to give spoilers to because she doesn’t really care,” he laughs. “She watches it, she’s a supportive mom, but she’s quite honest about it: ‘It’s not really my thing, not really my bag.'” Besides his mother, Dempsie isn’t giving away any details about what to expect for Gendry as the show comes to an end. “I think in season seven when Ser Davos comes and finds him in Flea Bottom, he doesn’t know what it is he’s been waiting for,” he teases. “But I think Gendry has this innate feeling that he wanted to be part of something bigger and more significant. I think he’s searching for purpose. He knows he has to be part of this thing—but it doesn’t mean he’s not terrified of it.”

Taking a moment to reflect, Dempsie speaks of his admiration for showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss and how much he’s learned from his “consistently brilliant” co-stars during his time on the show. Although only six episodes long, the final season had an exceptionally long shooting schedule (ten months), making goodbyes even more poignant. “You wrap and you have your last day and that’s quite emotional and it feels like the end of a chapter in your life,” he says. “It all finishes and you realize that you’ve made such amazing friends and had the most insane roller coaster experience, so just riding that train is a pretty mad place to be. It’s a shame it’s all coming to an end.”

Dempsie’s career, however, is far from over. Saying he “trusts his instincts” for an engaging script, the focus in his future is less on the type of role he would like to play next and more on the desire to work with great writers and directors. This spring, he returned to a starring role on Epix’s second season of Deep State, a political espionage thriller, as Harry Clarke, now a former MI6 spy. “When you decide you want to be an actor, playing a spy is one of those things you have in your mind,” he says. “You run around with guns, being earnest, fighting the good fight.” After the events of last season, Harry’s faith in a just system is extinguished and he chooses to leave MI6. With Walton Goggins joining the cast, the latest episodes take place predominantly in Mali, where an apathetic Harry has been working a soulless job as a private security guard, offering a look at the backstories of the main characters while diving into the shadowy world of sub-Saharan African politics. “It feels like a real ensemble piece this year,” Dempsie says. “There’s a number of different story strands and a load of great new characters.”

Despite all his success, Dempsie remains humble, hesitant to talk much about himself and preferring to keep the focus on his craft as an actor. “The less you know, the better,” he says, laughing. “The less people know about you, the easier it will be for them to buy into you as a range of different characters. When you become a personality, you become a celebrity or famous person, it makes it quite difficult. They just know too much about you and they can’t just buy into you.”

Game of Thrones continues on Sundays on HBO. Deep State continues on Sundays on Epix.