TLC: Moving Mountains with Conan Stevens...

Since Impact last spoke to Australian actor and man-mountain Conan Stevens, his career has gone from strength with solid supporting turns in a number of high profile productions around the world. He clearly continues to be pro-active about his career,honing his skills and that’s serving him well as can be seen by the strong roles in everything from Game of Thrones, Spartacus, The Hobbit, Tony Jaa’s A Man Will Rise, and we’ll soon be seeing his interpretation of Asgard’s favourite son Thor with the upcoming release of Vikingdom.

Impact: Conan, it’s been a while since we last spoke and your career has gone from strength to strength. Can we begin by talking about your involvement on Game of Thrones where you originated the role of Ser Gregor Clegane, The Mountain That Rides!

Conan Stevens: It has been a while, I think just over fiur years when we finished working together on Yuen Woo-ping’s True Legend if I am not mistaken. Just four years, but it seems like a lifetime ago, so much has happened since then, not to mention I have learned from the experience and 'grown up' a fair bit within the industry, both on and off the set.

First order of business, well... stroke of 'luck' actually was landing the part of Ser Gregor “The Mountain The Rides” Clegane in HBO's Game of Thrones. The 'luck' was mostly supplied by fans of the best-selling book series A Song Of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. The other smaller portion of 'luck' was supplied by 23 years in the gym trying to turn myself into a man-monster, dilly dallying about sword fighting with the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA) and all weekend role playing extravaganzas.

Initially a fan wrote to me telling me there were rumours that a TV series might be made from the book series and that there was an 8ft tall massive and ruthless knight in the books. So researching a little I then wrote an article on my website as to why I would be a good choice for the 8ft tall massively-built Ser Gregor Clegane. Sure enough after optimising the article for Google to pick up on the character name and display it prominently in their search results, the fans started stumbling across my website and discussions started in the www.westeros.org fan forums. This resulted in a fair few emails, discussions and corrections to my original article.

When forum discussions over who would be the best actor to play Gregor the fans were about 80% behind me as the top nomination, which was surprising and flattering at the same time, it was also said that the producers were watching the forums. I then received another email from a fan who told me that auditions were being held for the pilot episode. Gregor wasn't in the pilot but I did manage to sneak in an audition tape for the part of Khal Drogo through a casting ggency I knew in Australia in the hope that the Game of Thrones Casting Director would see me before Gregor’s part was auditioned for. 

The pilot went ahead and the series got the green light from HBO. Months after this I was worried somewhat that I could not find the Gregor audition for the sho, and thought I had missed it. Despondent one morning I checked my email and there was an offer to play Gregor from HBO casting on a one year contract - they had auditioned other actors and used my Drogo tape as my audition for Gregor. I was in! I can't explain how 'high' I was after reading that email, seriously jumping up and down like a little kid on Christmas - my first big Western production. I am absolutely sure the shift workers who lived downstairs were not happy that morning.

Working on Game of Thrones was exciting for everyone, it was a big production, there was a fair bit of money being spent on it and we all knew HBO was betting on this being a hit. Working was a dream, I did not have costume so much as an armourer, tailor-made armour that fitted and moved fantastically well and was comfortable, though heavy, to wear. Added to historians, real blacksmiths, medieval specialists on set it was a very serious production.I was originally scheduled for a week of sword training with Rory McCann, we went through the choreography with Buster Reeves (Batman Begins, Troy) for thirty minutes and... I am very thankful for this...Buster told production I had learned the choreography and would not be needed for the rest of the week. So they sent me off to refresh my horse riding with Camilla Naprous of The Devil's Horsemen, which turned out to be useful not only for the Game of Thrones tournament scene but also a couple of years later for Vikingdom as well.

When the first season aired I watched the first reviews and ratings with great anticipation. It did exceedingly well, the next week viewership climbed again, the week after it climbed again. The show was a hit, thoughts of recurring work and my first 'big break' swirled through my mind. Elated was the only way to describe my feelings at that point.

I'm just seeing now that for Game of Thrones season 4 strongman competitor Thor Bjornsson has replaced Ian Whyte, who played Gregor Clegane in Season 2, that's 3 mountains in four seasons - I hope the viewers can keep up. A quick look at IMDB shows Ian has used Game of Thrones to leverage his way into more work, as I did. Hopefully Thor can keep this 'lucky streak' running.

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