Vladimir Furdik (The Night King) was the ‘real’ hero behind the scenes of Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones had a number of heroic characters, each of them amazing in their own way, from the Stark children to The Hound, Brienne, Greyworm, Davos, Jorah, to name but a few. All of them were showcased brilliantly on the screen, but there were some unsung heroes of the show that many fans are quite unaware of. And surprisingly, one of them is none other than the actor who played the freezing menace The Night King – Vladimir Furdik. Furdik is a man of many talents, even The Witcher’s Henry Cavill is a big fan of him. Behind the scenes of Game of Thrones, he was known as the favorite trainer amongst the extras, protecting them from accidents on more than a few occasions.

In a recent interview with Game of Laughs, the face of the Game of Thrones extras and an unsung hero in his own right, Andrew McClay, recalled training with Furdik for battle scenes on the show. He reminisced:

“I think it’s the battles that I’d like to bring up because every battle that we did, we always went through training camps. And these were run by Vladimir Furdik, who was the Night King of course. And he was just so nice, whenever he was teaching his s#!t. He’d just be like doing your few moves and stuff and then you repeated with your partner, and he’s just like, “I like what I’m seeing, I like what you do. I like this.” You know. And he’d never say, “Ah that’s s#!t. This is s#!t.” He’d say like, “Oh maybe you want to try this instead, or this.” He really made you feel like you were doing good work.”

He also recalled the time Furdik saved him from getting seriously injured in season 8 of Game of Thrones, in the battle of King’s Landing:

“The place was like fuc*ing fire dropping everywhere, killing Lannisters. Greyworm (Jacob Anderson) he’s in the middle spinning his spear. And his spear nearly took off my head, Vladimir actually caught it off camera, you know what I mean. And then threw it. And then Jacob just started swinging again. That was brilliant. I loved that.”

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