This Game of Thrones Cameo Ruined the Immersion Worse Than That Starbucks Cup
Cameos are a common thing in cinema, but sometimes, they really break the immersion — and few did so as brutally as this Game of Thrones guest appearance.
Summary:
- In Game of Thrones Season 7, popular singer Ed Sheeran portrays a Lannister soldier Arya Stark meets in the woods.
- Most fans admit that Sheeran’s cameo was extremely immersion-breaking and inappropriate, regardless of their views on the star.
- Shows like Game of Thrones require the audience to be immersed and can’t afford randomly having pop stars in them, unlike real-life sitcoms like Friends.
Whenever a show gets big and its budget increases, its creators have to battle many temptations. Cameos are one of them: when you have eight figures to play around with, the urge to throw some heavylifters into a few episodes becomes irresistible. But while some shows — like Friends — are great for cameos, it’s a complete no-go for others — like Game of Thrones. Still, Benioff and Weiss broke this rule once…
GoT Once Invited a World-Famous Singer
In Game of Thrones Season 7, Arya Stark stumbles across a small group of Lannister soldiers who take care of her, despite her considering them enemies. Among them is an all-too-familiar face of everyone’s most favorite ginger, Ed Sheeran — a world-famous star singer who was going viral at the time.
Game of Thrones showrunners Benioff and Weiss explained Ed Sheeran’s sudden guest appearance to Vanity Fair: apparently, it was a surprise gift to Maisie Williams, the Arya Stark actress. Williams loved the chance to work with her idol, and we’re happy for them, but… It was one of those times where a star cameo was really, really inappropriate.
Ed Sheeran’s GoT Cameo Ruined Immersion
We love Ed Sheeran as much as the next guy, we swear, and seeing him on the screen brought smiles to our faces. But there was a huge drawback: while grinning, we were completely torn out of George Martin ’s fantasy world. Ed Sheeran’s cameo was as immersion-breaking as they come, as fun as it was.
The problem is that shows like Game of Thrones that are set in different worlds and eras must stay immersive at all times. In Friends, you can throw in musicians, millionaires, and whoever else: it’s a modern-day sitcom, after all. But in Game of Thrones, seeing a real-life pop star instead of an actor is jarring and inappropriate.
For most people, regardless of how much they love Ed Sheeran, his cameo felt like rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and suddenly seeing Beyonce as one of the elvish singers. It’s not inherently bad; it will just take forever to get immersed back into the movie afterwards, won’t it?
So we’d say that Emilia Clarke ’s infamous Starbucks cup was the least of Game of Thrones’ immersion problems in the late seasons.
Source: Vanity Fair