Hi I’m Richard Madden, I’m getting ready to answer your questions! Post here at 12:30pm ET to hear all about Klondike on Discovery!
Avery Friend: Hi Richard – thanks so much for doing this! It sounds like filming Klondike was a lot of fun, but also pretty nervewracking. What was the scariest moment for you? Were there any stunts that you didn’t want to do yourself?
I always like doing my own stunts. Going into the river rapids was definitely terrifying. I convinced myself I was in the studio and they could turn off the rapids. That was the only way I was going to through myself into them repeatedly. Being buried alive sucks too.
Nicki Ulrich: I am at work doing this so if I get fired make it worth it and answer my question 🙂 Was it hard to learn the American accent for the role of Bill? And how long did it take to get it down?
Seriously hope you don’t get fired. It was tough, but I stayed in accent for close to four months in order to try and make it as authentic and believable as possible. At the end of the day, doing an accent for me is using a muscle like any muscle in the body. And the best way to do it is over and over again until it’s strong and becomes second nature.
Valentine Pinon: What is the most hard experience and why? Working with the Belgian rainy weather(ahah,a scot’ who said that xD)for an intimate film like “The Promise”, working on the gold rush in extreme conditions in beautiful Canada, incarnate a king in the world of GRRM or a gay in paramedic’s team?
Working on a gold rush almost killed me a few times, literally.
Nancy Cozzi: If you had to recommend one book to people to read, what would it be? PS: You rock and I wish you all the best with your career.
I can’t commit to one book only, but I love to read Down and Out in Paris and London, also Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast
April Dessiree Denney: Do you guys find it hard to enjoy a show you’ve made when you know everything that happens, or ever wonder what the show would have been like if you hadn’t been a part of it?
I never wonder what it’d be like because I’m so involved in it. I can only see how we made it, but you’re not in every single scene and thus there are whole parts of the show you’ve read in the script, scenes that I’ve pictured, and then you get to see what those other actors and director have done to bring them to life – and that’s always a joy to see.
Olivia Della Rovere: Hi Richard ! Have you had a physical preparation or special training for this role? What challenges have you faced during filming? What are your best and worst memories?
I’m lucky enough that in my job I get to learn new skills a lot of the time. And in preparation for Klondike I had to learn how to dogsled, which I did most weekends on a freezing ranch in Alberta, Canada.
Heather Ann: Richard, you are an amazing actor and beautiful person. Cannot wait to watch Klondike! What is next for you?
I just finished filming Cinderella for Disney and 2014 is wide open.
Avery Friend: You’ve played characters in medieval-esque times and during the gold rush. Is there another historical period you’d like to explore next?
Pre-historic with dinosaurs because I’m quite into dinosaurs.
Rebecca Pearce: Hello Richard! Thanks so much for doing this Q&A 🙂 I was wondering, since we’ve seen you play mostly heroic characters so far, would you ever consider playing a more villainous character?
Totally my pleasure. I’d love to play dark characters as well. Klondike fascinated me because you start off with a man with a good heart and you see him pushed to extremes and places where that darker side may even come out. There’s good and bad in every character and it’s the decisions they make that define them.
Avery Friend: According to IMDB, tomorrow your lovely TV mom Michelle Fairley turns 50! Do you still keep up with her and the rest of your former GoT castmates?
Totally. A lot of the cast are still close friends of mine, which makes it difficult as they want to tell me spoilers from season four and I won’t let them. As this is the first time I can just enjoy the show as a regular viewer. Quietly hoping that my cast mate friends don’t also get slaughtered.
Gabriella Messina: What draws you to choosing a script? What makes it impossible to say, “No”, to.
An amazing story always is the driving factor. A character that surprises me, and more importantly, a part that I don’t know if I’m good enough to pull off. It has to be something that when I read it I get a distinct idea of who the character is. And then if I feel I am not talented enough to portray the vision in my mind then I feel like I want to take the job because then I’ll be pushing myself as an actor and improving. But at the heart of it, amazing storytelling is the key.
David Ly: Has working on Klondike changed your views on gold mining?
I watch Gold Rush on Discovery. And I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. And those guys have huge machines and a lot of money to do it. In the Klondike, back then, these people really just had their own bare hands and less knowledge than we do today about where the gold might lie. So I understand about 10% of how difficult and miserable it must have been for these people. In order to even get there, never mind start looking for gold, you had to be a kind of warrior.
さくら 雪: How do you find this project? How can you compare it to your TV series GOT?
To be honest, it was quite overwhelming both during filming and months later. With Game of Thrones, I had a number of years to discover a character, to build a world, and breaks in filming to come back to that world I was discovering. With Klondike, I had an intense period of time to prepare for a world that actually exists, and immerse myself and dive in head first (sometimes literally) into a world which was fast and hard and ruthless. In lots of ways, the stakes on Klondike and GOT were the same: it’s always life or death in Klondike as it was in Westeros.
Melissa Pears: Hi Richard, I’m really glad you’re here and answering questions! So do you have a funny story from filming Klondike?
And by the way with my friend really miss Robb’s curly hair. You know, of course, you look very handsome now too but your curls…awww 😛
The wolves were like big fluffy puppies. There’s a scene where my character tries to make himself as big and loud as possible to scare away the wolves that are ready to kill him. And after the first take, I was asked not to shout so loud because it was scaring the wolves…
That’s it! Thanks for your questions. I hope you tune in on Monday. It’s an awesome piece. And I’m pretty proud of it. Thank you, Rich x
