Richard Madden Thinks the ‘Game of Thrones’ Cast Deserves a Medal

Hear ye, hear ye: The King in the North has some thoughts on his former “Game of Thrones” castmates. Namely, that they’re all great performers who deserve medals for sticking with their characters for so long. It is known.

“It was such a hard thing to finish because from first pilot to my death was five years,” Madden told Variety of his experience. “And I think, five years to spend with any one character — ’cause you just kinda put them on the shelf for six months and then you take them back again.”

Madden, who played Robb Stark on the HBO drama for its first three seasons, won a Golden Globe for his performance in the Netflix miniseries “Bodyguard” earlier this year and co-stars in “Rocketman,” which just premiered to favorable reviews at Cannes — success that he attributes, at least in part, to his time on “Thrones.”

“I had the best time, it helped me so much with my career and my experience,” he said. “I learned a lot just from shooting 30 hours of television, I really started to learn my trade doing that.” As the eldest Stark son, Madden had one of the most high-profile roles on the series — and arguably the most prominent part in its most infamous, wrenching sequence — until his untimely departure.

But all good things must come to an end — including “Game of Thrones” itself, which airs its series finale after eight seasons tonight. “And I was thankful to leave it, I think the actors on it now must be 11 years into playing these characters and that is like — give these guys some medals here because that is a marathon,” said Madden.