The Three Questions with Andy Richter - John Bradley

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

John Bradley (Game of Thrones, Moonfall) joins Andy Richter to talk about growing up as an anxious kid in Manchester, how his first audition was Game of Thrones and more. 

hi everyone it's andy richter this is the three questions and i am very happy to have uh my old pal on the conan couch uh john bradley here how many times were you on the con couch. John Bradley here. How many times were you on the Conan show? Hi. Quite a few times. I think I was twice in the studio and then a few Comic-Cons as well. Three Comic-Cons maybe? Two or three? Yeah, no. Yeah, you did quite a complicated bit with us, didn't

you? Yeah, I did a bit in character I think. Yeah, I think it was did a bit in in character, I think. Yeah, I reprised my role. Yeah. Yeah. As a Samuel Talley briefly. Yeah. But it was always it was always such a such a delight to come on and see you guys. It was always a blast. And it's lovely to get to talk to you again now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you. You're in England.

You've you've apparently resisted the lure of Hollywood. You haven't decided to move over here and become a California boy? No. I mean, that's... I'm sort of aware of the format of this show, and that's something that

we'll talk about later. I have resisted it up to now. Oh, you have? Okay. In the face of, in the face of a lot of pressure, especially in the early days, the sort of Game of Thrones days, uh,

the, the, the law of it and the pressure of certain, uh, people who were in charge of my career to, to get me over there. And, and,

uh, I know I, I've, I have, I have my, uh, I have a really, really nice life where I, and, uh, I know I, I've, I have, I have my, uh, I have a really, really nice life where I come over to LA and I come to California and I do comic cons and things like that. And I, I get to come home and, and back to the place where I grew up and the, back to the people that I knew when I was growing up and I get to tell them about it.

So I get, I get, I get a home a home life. And that way it always stays exciting and it always stays novel and exhilarating to come over there and do that stuff and then come back out of it. I think if I was over there a lot and leading that kind of life, the novelty would wear off for me and I'd be less excited by it when it happens. Yeah. And I also, I mean, can imagine uh it would be nice because

i mean you have enjoyed wonderful success you deserve every bit of it it's awesome that you have it but also it's like it's full of lots of phony bullshit. You know what I mean? And so it's nice to be able to get out. I mean, there's times, you know, I live in Burbank, California, which is like sort of like its own little Midwestern town in the middle of Los Angeles. And that's why I live there, because it's just like the least amount of bullshit. it's, and, and I, I would love, I've thought often like, man, I wish I just lived in Michigan or something and just could drop back in here and then go back to like reality, some kind of reality. Yeah. Well, that's, I, I think that's exactly the, that's exactly the right kind of balance to strike. And, you know, my, you know, my, my team in LA now, I'm very, very happy with them because they, they empathize with me and

they know what's important to me and they know what my priorities in life are. I just think that, you know, there are so, there are so many stories of people having a, having a good moment in Hollywood. And then the next minute they make a slightly unwise decision professionally, and then it's all over. Then nobody yeah nobody sort of wants to sort of nobody has any time for them anymore and I just think if you burn all your bridges at home and you cast people off and you you know you cut those ties and you say I'm going to Hollywood I'm going to make a success of it go over to Hollywood have a couple of turkeys nobody there wants to know you anymore and then you can't go home anymore because you've got those bridges and you're

adrift. So I like to feel rooted. Does that also go for business things too? Like you, you want to keep yourself open to the UK TV and film world, you know, in addition to Hollywood or. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I mean it's, it's, you know, there's a lot that can be said for for streaming and things at the moment and the way that it's affected movie theaters and the way that it's affected the movie business in general but one of the good things about it is if you make something that's a uk-based production and it's good people will still get to see it

all over the world because tv has branched out into a into a an international thing broadcast tv is becoming a much a much more rarer thing if something goes on a streaming platform it can be a tiny little uk show and yet people all over the world get to see it and i think that one of the good things about streaming is that it's it's kicked that door open in that way for for you know productions that wouldn't necessarily have had their hollywood moment or their limelight moment they get they get that now and also it does super cool things like makes korean tv the hottest thing at the moment like exactly that's so awesome that that can't that can only help, you know, just people having a better understanding of the world.

And I mean, all over the world is, you know, like to watch something in a different language is just so healthy, especially for this country. It's so isolated in so many ways. Yeah. so isolated in so many ways yeah and it could only it could only help it can only help the sort of film and tv industry in the english-speaking world because if they're in a bit of a rut where where you know they they're plowing the same furrow and it's become a bit of a machine and everybody's become a bit complacent if you do get a korean tv show that's just impeccable, then the competition has broadened out. They're a bit like, oh, now we're not just in competition with ourselves. We're in competition with the best shows from around the world. And hopefully they'll get people to sort of pull their socks up a bit and do some interesting stuff.

That's capitalism right there. That's what that is. Somebody threatens you, that's the engine for progress. Tell me about your hometown. Tell me about where you grew up. Now, you're still in your same hometown? Do you still live in there or in the same town? I'm still in Manchester, yeah.

Manchester is a major city, so there are a lot of different parts of Manchester. I don't live in the same tiny place where I grew up, but I live in Manchester still. I grew up in a place called Withenshaw in Manchester, which I never found it to be like this. I had a great time growing up there, but it has a certain reputation for being quite a tough place it's a it's a welfare housing welfare housing estate i

think when it was built it was the biggest welfare housing estate in europe wow when it was built it just goes it just goes on and on and on and you know i i had a really nice time growing up there but but but it does have a certain reputation for... The last thing I want to do is to badmouth it, because it's been really great to me, but it does have a certain reputation for... Sure, like a rough-and-tumble place. Rough-and-tumble place, yeah, but in my experience,

really, really nice people, and I still have lots of friends there, and I lived with my mum and dad, who were in our welfare house in Wythenshawe and they're still there and I go back there all the time oh that's great that's great um and has it ever occurred to you to have you ever lived away from from Manchester or have you always kind of made that your I mean I'm sure that you go away for months to do some of the projects that you do yeah uh well yeah i do go away for months and i've always come back to manchester but my my girlfriend is in london she lives in london so uh i think i think about if i was if i was looking for an excuse to move down there she's as good as as good an excuse as

i'm going to find so i can i can see myself making the move sometimes so it's one of those things that that that you sort of build up in your own mind that moment of announcing to your family that you're going to move away and thinking that they're going to break down in tears and not be able to cope with it and beg you not to go but i bet they're going to be fine about it yeah yeah i bet they're just going to say well you know we know how much you love her and we know we love her and we we know that it's it's the best for your relationship so they're going to be fine about it but i've built it up in my head over the years as being you know a cutting of the a cutting of the apron strings and also it's not it's not quite as you know it's not quite serious that i do just like it up here but i've, but I'll, if anything was going to drag me away from here,

it would be falling in love with someone. Right, yeah. And how far is it from one to the other? I don't know. About 400, about 300, 400 miles. Oh, okay. Which in American terms is like around the corner, right? Yeah.

You can be on the same street in LA for that time. Yes, absolutely. But also because there's a big cultural divide between the North and South in the UK. Yeah. It feels like there is. It feels like you're crossing a boundary and sort of buying into a completely different lifestyle and a completely different set of morals and stuff, which is all northern bullshit.

But we set a lot of stall by that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. You know, it also occurs to me, too, that your family probably has, they are used to absence because of your work, I think, too. So it probably does sort of make the eventual separation okay, you know, or more okay. You know, I mean, because when you go to, I don't know, wherever you guys were, Tunisia, or wherever Game of Thrones is, for two months, months you know it's like they're used to you because you know you may see them maybe as much i don't know i mean you know yeah it's an easy flight too isn't it you know what is that an hour hour two yes two hours two hours on the train i can be yeah yeah no time yeah right but you know Yeah, right. But there's something deeper at play

and I try to avoid thinking about it too often. But I think when I was a kid, I was a really, really anxious kid. I was really anxious and I wasn't quite sure what I was anxious about. I was worried a lot and I used to fret about things and my mum always used to say I was a a lot, and I used to fret about things, and my mum always used to say I was a bundle of nerves.

I was like a really neurotic kid. And now that I think about it, all the things that I was neurotic about or anxious about was something happening to my parents. I was very aware of that from a very young age, an age that most kids don't have those kind of thoughts yeah i remember i remember being in school once actually and sometimes when you're a kid you have a profound thought out of nowhere and i said to my friend i said

can you believe that one day your mom's gonna die and and he said yeah but one day you're gonna die and I went yeah but never mind that one day your mum's gonna die and to me that that was like a that was like a moment of I was possibly been about five or six but it was a moment where a certain a certain carefree attitude was sort of lost and I have that on my mind I have that on my mind most days and when I go away it's a morbid thought and Covid's done nothing to sort of make this any better but when I go away I think I genuinely have to put it to the back of my mind I might never see you again yeah it's an anxiety it's an anxiety that I live with all the time so maybe that's maybe that's something that's held me back from doing that move as well.

But, you know, I mean, it just, just one, you know, people carry anxieties around with them and never been from being a tiny little kid. That's one thing that I've, I've carried about. Have you, I mean, I imagine you've, you know, you're working at ameliorating kind of this stress or that kind of anxiety you know i mean it's got to be something you work on because nobody nobody wants to live with anxiety like that no i know and and you do find yourself you do find yourself um thinking well i'm i'm stressing away the time that I do have with them

but also I sort of I've opened up about this to people before and I've mistaken their advice to to you know, stop being so anxious

about it, I've mistaken that advice for stop caring. To stop caring about your parents. And I'm like, I don't want to stop caring. Because as soon as I stop caring, it's going to happen. And it's going to happen while I'm not caring. I don't think I could particularly forgive myself for that. I make it sound like it's demonstratively something I'm stressing about every day. It's not not it's just in the back of my right in the back of my mind so so maybe

you know maybe that and by the way this is all one-way traffic this is nothing to do with them it's just it's just you know sometimes sometimes you know it's it's you could say is it is it the sign of a somebody with a sort of morbid fascination with stuff it's actually could be seen as a sign of somebody who enjoys their life and doesn't want it to doesn't want it to change yeah i think it feels it feels more like that than anything anything else yeah that yeah that no that's that that's good i mean i um i relate to i mean i i i suffer from depression and have my whole life actually the last few years have been i found the right combination of medication etc but i mean i know that feeling of

feeling you know like sad about the future because you're miserable now and you're going to be miserable then and it's like no no you're ruining now being miserable about the future because you're miserable now and you're going to be miserable then. And it's like, no, no, you're ruining now being miserable about the future. I mean, I used to have a, it was my, my mom, when she would come visit us, I, she, there was a couple of times where, you know, say she was leaving on Monday and she'd seem real sad on Saturday. And I'd say, what's wrong? she'd say, well, I have to leave on Monday. And I'm like, yeah, well, yeah, but you're here now, like you're here until Monday.

So like, it's not Monday, you know? And that was just like when she's, that's just like, it's such a like an encapsulation of the way, the way we screw ourselves over, I think, you know? Pretty commonly, you know? I think so, but my sort of raison d'etre for it has always been people who don't think about this stuff, who have a sunny outlook,

they're blindsided by bad news. Yeah. And people who are thinking about bad news, they're never blindsided by it. If you're always anticipating it, I'd like to think I can cope with it better, but I probably won't. That's probably just nonsense. Yeah, well, it's, you know, my ex-wife and I had a different way of dealing with things. There was something coming up that was worthy of anxiety. There was something coming up that was worthy of anxiety.

My mode is to say, well, you know, I go, well, why not? I'm going to wait to worry about it. You know, I just have for some reason. And it's mostly only with like there's some personal things that I can't do that with. But certainly with a lot of work things, you know, I can do that. I can say, well, that's happening in two weeks, so I'll start worrying about it in two weeks. Whereas my ex-wife used to go over every bad kind of scenario that could possibly happen. And I would say, that seems crazy to me. And she'd say, no.

She said, I am preparing myself for the worst so that everything better than the worst is a is a relief it's a bonus it's a bonus yeah exactly because you you know she's like you're going into the worst with no you're gonna just get hit full face with the worst you know that's exactly that's exactly yeah yeah yeah and it's so interesting i and i think that and i think that's right and i think it does it seeps into every aspect of your life i think for example even when i even when i'm at work there are some actors who who are really liberated and go in front of the camera and just see what happens yeah they're they're able they probably know the lines but they're able to go in front of the camera and just do it and it might be brilliant and if it's not brilliant we'll try another one and then that

might be brilliant but I've always been uh I've always been very keen on preparing so I know exactly what I'm doing when I when I get in front of there so I'm not going to get I'm not going to get you know nothing's going to surprise me I'm going to be completely in control of it as much as you can be in control of it, sometimes it still doesn't go right for various reasons. But I've never been one to trust my instincts in the moment in that way. I think it all maybe feeds into something that I always think that probably preparing for the worst can bring out the best in me, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, like I say, I think it's different ways of dealing with it, you know, because I couldn't do it the other way. Like, I can't worry about things that aren't here yet. It just, like, that makes me more nervous than being nervous for some reason. I don't know why it is. Well, now, you said you were an anxious kid how does an anxious kid find the nerve to get on stage well I think I think what I think where that

came from was when I was a kid we didn't any, there was no theatrical background in my family. All my, my, all the, everybody in my family has been a manual worker pretty much. And we didn't, we didn't go to the theatre. We didn't even really watch movies. We just watched all the TV and, and TV comedy, not even TV drama. We just watched a lot of comedy. And I remember, so I, so I remember watching, We just watched a lot of comedy. And I remember, so I remember watching, I remember watching a lot of, and also because my parents are older

than the parents of my school friends. Both my parents were sort of nearly 40 when I was born. So what that did was that opened me up to a whole scope of entertainment that people of my age weren't really opened up to because their parents were probably too young to appreciate it. I remember watching of Laurel and Hardy when I was a little kid and just falling in love with them. And I think what it was, if you're a bit anxious and two people, even though they were long gone by the time this was happening, if two people can make you happy, and you really fall in love with them,

and it becomes a very privileged position for them to be in, I think. So I remember wanting to be an actor or an entertainer before I even knew what one was. I remember just watching them and thinking, I want to make other people feel the way they make me feel I just I just really like the idea of being able to do that for someone if there's somebody who's who's anxious to be able to take their mind off it for a bit and sort of cheer them up even though they were shot you know at 80 70 80 years before

i was feeling these moments it's like a hand through history that makes you feel better and and i still think that and i and i still think that in in a world where acting is can sometimes get quite worthy and actors can seem to tie themselves up in knots about what they're getting out of it i still think that entertaining people is one of the most noble and best things you can do absolutely i don't think i don't think 100 agree i don't think it is frivolous and i don't think it certainly don't think it's easy no i think i think it's one of the most important things you can do for someone to just say watch me and for the next 10 minutes i'll take your mind off all that stuff yeah yeah so so so

that was it it was it was a sort of desire to make people feel that way and and and i and i was when i was a kid i was quite i've gotten mature in some ways like i was i was very comfortable talking to adults and very you know i i was i was kind of smart as well not in a not in a precocious way but in a kind of worldly way like i was able to just join in conversations and things so i wasn't shy yeah necessarily and and i was always up for with catholic family so i i was always up for, we're a Catholic family, so I was always up for doing readings in church and things and readings in school. And I was an altar server for a while. So I was never frightened. And that's show business. There's some show business in there. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely costumes, lovely costumes. And so I was

never shy necessarily. i was maybe shy about certain things like my weight because i was an overweight kid deep down but on the surface of it i wasn't shy about putting myself up for things and so so that combined with a desire to entertain people it just made school plays and stuff feel like a natural place for me to be yeah that's great i mean it you know it does make i mean i asked like how does how does that happen but i mean i know because it's kind of me you know like i say anxiety isn't so much my issue uh but i understand i mean i i feel like i'm kind of shy and don't like to you know draw attention to myself and yet i know i understand well yeah but i mean but even in my mind it makes sense like

well yeah but i mean i can get on stage you know it's like yeah it's like for some reason these two things coexist at one time and they don't you know it's like it's just it's a different context you know you're putting yourself into a different context where you almost get a vacation from yourself in some way you know yeah and i and i think it's almost i know for a fact that i've i've discovered this and looking back and i know for a fact that i was doing this at school it was a case of me sort of um it's like a sleight of hand magic trick where I was basically saying don't pay attention to me but don't pay attention to my weight pay attention to to this and controlling where the attention was

focused on you yeah I mean I I did I definitely think that that was a part of it. And it was strange going from elementary school into high school, how I deliberately played down how smart I was. Oh, really? Yeah, I didn't think that was something that was prized, necessarily. I didn't think that yeah I didn't think that was something that was prized necessarily I didn't think I didn't think it was something that would that would make me many friends for whatever reason it's their hang-up it's not my hang-up but I but I was just determined

to not be not be different it's such a weird thing that happens when you're at school and you feel a bit anxious the last thing you want to be is different even different in a good way even if you're smarter than average i didn't want to be that i just wanted to be average i just wanted to be like everybody else and it took me a while to to sort of shake that off and and know that the differences about me were worth putting to the front of things you know were you purposely like tanking homework and stuff to so your grades weren't good or were your grades good you just weren't outwardly presenting as you know you kept your smartness to yourself that's exactly what it is and i was still able i was still able to get by yeah but i but i fooled around and as a matter of fact the

teacher one said to me and it was almost too late to do anything about it then I was I was fooling around in class I was clowning around and they pulled me to one side after the class and said you're the worst type of pupil there is and I was like all right do go on and they And they said, because you're naturally smart enough to get by, whether you fool around or not. But by fooling around, you're stopping some kids who aren't as smart as you from doing well. Oh.

And I thought, oh, God, right and I felt so and I felt so bad but by the and I wish I had regretted it so much I knew they were right but by that stage I thought that when other kids were laughing at me that I was entertaining them and I was making them feel good about themselves in the way that I wanted people to make me feel. But I just didn't see the bigger picture and I felt really bad. But by that time your personas established and that's what people want from you.

They want you to be funny. They don't even know it's to their own, to their own detriment. So it's amazing how you get, you get saddled with these, with these funk social functions that you can't get out of, even if you sort of wanted to, but yeah, the worst type of people there is. How about that for, I'm going to put that on my IMDB trivia. John Bradley is the worst type of person there is.

One of the worst types, which actually, I, I actually beg to differ with that teacher. I think like Hitler was worse, you know, he's the worst type of person, I think, you know? Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, you know, if if I'm number two, if it's Hitler than me, I'd like to think there was quite a distance between us. Sure. Of course. It's not a close. It's not a close call.

No, no. I don't think you're. I think like there's a pole pot in there somewhere. Oh, yeah. No, no. I don't think you're. I think like there's a pole pot in there somewhere. Oh, yeah. Can't you tell my loves are growing? When do you start to seriously consider making acting or theater your vocation well i i felt i knew that i wanted to do it but coming from the place that i came

from and coming from the background it just felt like a totally closed shop i just didn't think there was any any way in any way that it could could possibly happen and i think that that's that's getting is it getting better i don't know i hope it is but it still feels like that's something that holds a lot of kids from that environment back there's there's just no no roadmap for it necessarily and i didn't even know that there was such a thing as drama college i just didn't even know that that was a thing i had to be told that i had a pal when I was in high school, I had a pal who was theatrically minded like me, knew about drama school. And he told me about it. He said, there's a place you can go for three years. You have to pay, but you can get a loan from the government. You can go and study acting for three years and come out of it a trained actor.

I said, no way. I had idea that the other thing even existed and now it's so nice to see that he's doing very well because i don't know if you know uh there's a it's on broadway i think or maybe off broadway the the play that goes wrong you know those guys i do not know it yeah there's a there's a one there's a great so it's become a theatrical empire of plays that, it's like this theatre company is putting on a play, but as you're watching it, the play starts to unravel. People sort of make mistakes. They've had a phenomenal success with that.

And myself and the sort of guy behind, one of the guys behind that, we were at college together, and he was the one who set me on the path to drama school without him I never would have even knew that it existed oh wow and and yeah and then and then suddenly it's sort of interesting because all the way through that stage of my career I was doing school plays at sort of elementary school and I loved it. And then I was thinking, oh yeah, but when I get into high school, there's more kids.

So I'm not going to be as ahead of the pack as I am here. I'll just be somebody else who's good at it. Got to high school, was like, you know, was like good again or the best again. Yeah. And then before I got to drama school it was a bit like you know I'm bound I'm bound to not be the best here and I

got there and I was pretty good there as well so I think that when I was when I was in a theater studies group with a load of people who wanted to do it as well, and I was still pretty good, that's when I thought, oh, maybe I've got a place in the industry going forward. Never banked on it and never thought that it would get to the stage that it has. I just thought I might have a shot at some sort of a career, whether that's in local theatre or whether that's, you know, I didn't know what the ceiling was. But that was when I first started to think it might be a possibility.

Yeah. Yeah. I I'm right there with you. For me, I always looked at it as, or the thing that helped me believe I could do it was when I started to look at it as a trade and like this, you know, like this, this is a trade where you make a product and it's takes a, you know, like Liam Neeson, a certain set of skills, you know, like this is a trade where you make a product and it takes, you know, like Liam Neeson, a certain set of skills. You know, you learn some skills to do this one particular thing. And I also think like, you know, it's like you were. You were, you know, sort of sheepish about saying, you know, well, I was pretty good there too. You know, that's, that is something that happens when you have a natural,

a natural ability in this stuff in, you know, standing in front of people and lying and trying to be someone else in front of them and making them believe it. You just, you know, you have a natural sort of knack for it. And, you know, and I don't think there's anything wrong with kind of admitting that and, you know, in as humble a way as you can. And also, you revealed something that I have always felt, which is especially in acting, I don't think there's anything wrong with painting the picture of yourself by using relative terms. Like you don't, you know, you standing by yourself, there's this kind of notion that you have all this belief in yourself

and that you're fantastic. But me standing alone by myself, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I could be great. I could be nothing. I get in a group and I compare myself to other people and I can feel I need to work on this or I can feel like, hey, you know what? I'm doing fine, you know? Yeah. And it's just in that comparing ourselves to other people. It's not a bad thing.

And so it's like a useful bacteria in some situations, you know? Yeah, I completely agree. And, you know, that's sort of a question that i that i ask a lot of creative people or people in entertainment because i have my own answer to it in when i when i was studying it's funny it's funny that you say as soon as you see it as a trade but when i was studying drama for three years going in every day acting with my close pals doing shakespeare when the stakes were quite low you just performed it for other students or you know parents had come in and staff i think now that that was still the time where i've enjoyed it the most i've enjoyed the pro i've enjoyed the process

of it the most because there felt like there was no pressure and the consequences of failure were so small yeah as soon as soon as it does become your job as soon as it does become your trade and people are banking lots of money on the fact that you can do it you still enjoy it and get a satisfaction from it but it takes it takes the pressure that comes from that takes a certain shine off it when when you're not doing it for yourself anymore. You're literally in service. You're in service to millions of people watching, hopefully, and you're in service to directors and producers that have backed you and think that you can do it that golden period where I was pretty good but the consequences of messing up were small for the last time

and as soon as Game of Thrones happened the consequences of getting it wrong are suddenly huge and you're letting more and more people down and that shift, even though I still love my job and I still know how lucky I am to do it that shift was something that I know that my relationship with has changed then yeah well you know you had it was

like magical innocence in your hometown versus at one point the largest tv series in the world you know it's a it's a it's a really drastic change. I mean, just the fact that you're saying lines on that were written on paper is about the only thing the two have in common, because one is such a juggernaut. And it's so there's so much money. I mean, that's it. It's money. It's whether there's money or whether there's not money. And that just it just does change the stakes. And when you we might as well move on,

because you got the Game of Thrones right out of school, right? It was my first audition out, yeah. Wow. My first audition out of. Did that make people, did that make your peers nuts? That you, like, snagged pretty much a series regular on your first audition out of the gate of school? I'd like to think that they were genuinely pleased.

I mean, it was, it was, it was such a, we, we, we were such a close, a close knit sort of community in there. And we, we really did have each other's backs. And even now they're still my closest pals, the pals that I made. Oh, wow. You picked nice friends. You succeeded in picking nice friends. Yeah, but I just think that that's the place where you really get to know people more than anywhere else.

Because you're with them every day. Because we had long hours. We did like nine till six or seven every day. You're with them every day because we had long hours we did like nine till six or seven every day you're with them every day you get to know everything about them yeah for three years and so the people that you like are the people that you become friends with when you're there it feels like a very close relationship because you feel you know them inside out i think but it was so they were all happy for me and there was a lot of congratulations and lots of texts going around and lots of back slapping and then the first day on set felt a bit like oh they were all really happy for me but they've all gone away now yeah and now I

have to prove to David Benioff and Dan Weiss and all the producers on that show that they made the right call. And I became close friends with Kit Harington and close friends with David and Dan and so many other people on that show. But I remember going in on the first day thinking how sort of lonely it suddenly feels that people think I can do this but can i actually and now we're going to find out whether i whether i can or not and that was quite an exposing thing especially because at my theater school it was literally that it was a theater it was a theater-based training where we

didn't have any camera training really right. Right. We had three hours camera training across three years. So my fourth hour was in front of a camera on Game of Thrones. Wow. So looking back on it now, it was quite anxiety-inducing. And I actually think that if you've come from somewhere where you never expected to get to a place where, you know, you're even in the conversation for this type of thing, you constantly feel the need to prove yourself and work as hard as you possibly can just so that you don't get kicked back out of it again

and i don't think that's a bad thing i think the worst thing that can happen is when you assume that your place at that table is guaranteed for for life yeah i think that i think that that can make you sort of complacent and you can lose that hunger a little bit but that's that's but i remember yeah go going straight into that it was quite an exposing experience and it's talking about friends as well i did make close friends with kit harrington and and that sort of my peers in that show because none of us had really done anything yeah before and we were all kind of scared yeah i've always said the friends that you make when you're scared are the friends that you tend to cling on to because your friendship forged in amongst all that uncertainty.

Yeah. And it is. Well, and I mean, in this business is weird. It creates little, you know, kind of actual family structures or they function as one that last two months. And then they, you know, like in your case, they disband for 10 months and then they get back together, but sometimes they get together and then they never get back together. And you're, you know, you spend a lot of time with a bunch of people intensely for a short period of time, and then you don't see them.

And it's, it's, it's very unique. It's a very weird thing. I like for me, and I mean, and it's why's it's very unique it's a very weird thing i like for me and i mean and it's why you know there's tons of rome you know onset romance is a cliched phrase um yeah but i always found too whenever i did things like that i would invariably like make a friend like i would always kind of have to have like one person, you know, that could be my pal so that, you know, we could gossip about people and have lunch together. Yeah. Yeah. And especially if you're on location, go do stuff when you're not working because that can be really lonely and

weird. Yeah. And that, and that was something that, that was a totally new experience when I was shooting moonfall this movie that i have coming out uh shortly was the fact that we shot that in deep covid lockdown in montreal oh wow and that was the first i mean there was nothing open there was nothing to do so that was the first time really that i've done the job where there was no social aspect to it at all the entire thing the entire thing we weren't allowed there were where there was no social aspect to it at all. The entire thing. The entire thing.

We weren't allowed. There were no, there were no bars open or anything. Myself and Patrick Wilson, we were staying in the same hotel. So we had a couple of walks out to the shop and then came back in. There was nothing else to really do. So,

so somehow we, somehow we forged this chemistry and I think we forged it from a sense of. We all have to be really committed to this project if we're not going to make it grind to a whole. We all have to commit to it because we've come across the world away from our families. And now we're making this very ambitious movie in such a bizarre set of circumstances. Yeah. Where where everyone's got a mask on you don't know what any of the crew look like for the whole shoot that's weird yeah

yeah you feel you feel so alienated from everything so we managed to through through that sense of adversity we really banded together and really hunkered down and got through it but yeah when that social aspect is missing you really do notice that it notice that it's such an easy way to get a shorthand with people and to get a relationship going. When that construct isn't there, it's not as organic a process to really get to know people. And the better you know somebody, obviously, as you know, the better you know somebody, the easier it is when you step in front of a camera with them because you trust them more yeah there i also think too and because i sort of experienced this a little bit because during covid we were doing conan shows from home from our respective homes and mine was even just kind of like there were some days where i wasn't even on and they

would send me bits and i would shoot the bits myself but when we started actually going we went to the largo theater and started doing the show with just about six people there those six people like i felt so jazzed to be around those people because of just the sensory deprivation of the solitude that i imagine it kind of made it like crackle a little bit for you guys because you're also bored and lonely so getting to work with each other is the only chance you really kind of it's your only play time yeah your only social time exactly and and even though it is a big you know know, it's a big effects movie, there's lots of VFX in it. Roland Emmerich destroys the world again, which he can't seem to stop doing.

What's with that guy? Well, he's the master of it. And he really managed to get that down to a fine art, even though all that VFX was going on. art even though all that vfx was going on most of it most of the shoot was with myself patrick wilson and hallie berry in a tiny space shuttle capsule which was probably about the size of half the size of this room yeah so even and when the door shut of that capsule nobody else could get in right they were putting boom mics in through the window and we couldn't see anything it was all green screen around. So even though it is a movie with a lot of scale to it,

it still felt like quite an intimate acting experience because it was the three of us completely isolated from everybody else in this tiny sort of enclosed space. So there was still a certain degree of sort of acting satisfaction to get from that and a certain degree of of sort of acting satisfaction to get from that and a certain degree of team spirit that we derived from that yeah yeah well it's three strong performers too trapped in little box you know having to cut you know and i uh i uh i i forgot what i was gonna say oh i know what i was going to say. Oh, I know what I was going to say. Is there any kind of like, do you get to screw around?

Like, do you get to kind of like have ad libs? Like, do you shoot the lines and then say, let's try one for the heck of it? That does, yeah, that does happen. uh that that does yeah that does happen but but you know as i as i alluded to before when i said i i'm i don't like taking chances that much and i i like to sort of do a lot of work at home or work in a hotel and then come in with something to offer and once i've got the way i want to do it down like i sort of like to stick to it by row and practice it and get it in my muscle memory so quite often when the director says just do one see what happens it's very rare that i come up with anything that's any good yeah yeah people think people have a weird idea about improv and movies that they think you could

just come in and like let just do whatever you want but it's like no you gotta light it and you know like somebody can't just get up off the couch and run into the kitchen you know the camera can't follow them so it's usually improv and movies is usually just there's a slot that you can fill with different words and that's pretty much exactly you know yeah exactly and i i completely i admire so much the people that can do that. But there is a sort of, probably, you know, coming from the fact that there's a slight degree of imposter syndrome of somebody who doesn't quite think that they should be or deserve to be in this company, which is, you know, going back through my family of a lot of manual workers who roll their sleeves up and do the work. I like to do the work. And I think when people come in and just say, oh, well, I've not prepared anything, but I'll just keep doing takes and I'll do it different every time. And we'll just say, I always go a bit like, oh, you're just

trying to fluke one. You're just trying to get lucky yeah and and sometimes it's extraordinary when the very very skilled people who can do it do it but i just i don't have enough faith in my ability to do that and it sort of goes slightly against my work ethic yeah i get it i get it yeah it's like if you're gonna lay bricks you have to lay them in order. You can't just start skipping bricks and things. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that's why that's why acting and entertainment in general and comedy and music is such a is such a inspirational place to exist because everybody approaches things in different ways i mean i i think i mean i've talked about it a lot i don't know if you've seen the the peter jackson beatles thing but uh but what what get but what the beatles do and get back is it just reminds you just how how different creative approaches can can be brought together to make something that's so unique. And if everybody was the same, it'd get quite dull very quickly.

It's good to have all these different sensibilities, but I know very firmly what mine is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that thing, I love that thing. And I'm not even, you know, like I actually sometimes get beetle fatigue. You know, I'm like, okay, enough with the beetles. But I soaked up every minute of that thing, and it's by far the best presentation of the creative process I have ever seen.

Me too. And one of the parts of it is that it has to be eight hours long because so much of it is tedium. So much of it is just waiting around do it again do it again until like some little magic thing pops out you know and then you go oh let's make that you know so yeah no i i love that so yeah and and and the thing is that because we know the songs and it's like watching a scene it's like watching your favourite scene from a movie

if you become so familiar with it that you know every single detail of it, if you were to see an alternate take it just seems so wrong yeah, yeah all of those songs on the way to being what they become it's like how could you ever conceive

that it was going to be like this you know what I what i mean i just i just find that process and as soon as you in any creative work whenever you just chance upon something that's right you just really know it and then nothing else nothing else will do yeah you stumble upon that i think La Fonda, I think. Now, this movie, Moonfall, is you're, I, you know, I they sent me a link to try and watch it, and I'm a crabby old man and I couldn't get it to work, and then I just quit. So, I, you're gonna

I'm gonna have to pay for it, because I do want to see it, because it looks bananas. It's just the the trailer, and the but the thing that I love the most is you're all over the trailer. You're like you are the you carry the trailer like more so, I think, than Patrick Wilson. So that's, you know, wow. Good job.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, I know you didn't cut the trailer, but still, I mean, that's a good indicator of what they think will sell the movie. Well, I'd like to think so. When we, and once again, it's a really nice, it's a really nice position for me to be in. of Game of Thrones where having Oscar winner Halle Berry in this movie is going to be a large part of what sells it because she carries a great deal of star power. You know what you're getting with Halle, she's an incredible actress and it was a real honour to work with her. But I felt even in this situation, that kind of pressure was off me a little bit because they weren't they weren't using me to to finance the movie and they're not using my name to sell the movie yeah there was a time there was a time even when the studio thought and you know

it's their decision and I completely respected it. Thought that I wasn't a big enough name to have this part anyway, even though Roland wanted me to be in it. The studio disagreed for a while when it went to somebody else and I was sort of heartbroken about that, but it all worked out fine in the end. But sort of knowing that Hallie has got broad enough shoulders to carry the star power of the movie sort of freed me up freed me up to be able to have a bit of fun around that and I get that 100%

yeah and and she is and she is she's she's one of the one of the best number ones I've ever worked with her and my last two number ones have been her and and jennifer lopez and i've i've learned so much from the pair of them about what it is to be a number one but and i'd like to do it in my i'd like to do it in my career my ambition i've not got any ambitions to to you know to break any more ceilings necessarily because i don't necessarily think I have the right to want that. But I'd like to be a number one one day just to see how I deal with that pressure of it because I've had a masterclass in dealing with that pressure from two real professionals and they're very top of their game.

But from what I've seen, I'm happy to be number two or three. It just eases the pressure on myself slightly and just gives me the chance to surprise a little bit more I think I was number one on the call sheet for three different projects and I did not actually enjoy it that much I mean of course it's nice to be

listened to but even then you're not necessarily listened to but I'm much happier a few notches down and let everyone else take the heat. And I have to we have to wrap this up because you've got elsewhere to be. But I so let's just kind of get to like, what do you what do you feel like that? What's the thing you've learned the most, you know, that you would sort of, you know, I mean, I imagine people ask you for advice and usually can take that form. Well, the thing that I've learned the most, and it was a great relief to me to learn it,

was that you can come from somewhere and go to somewhere else, which feels completely out of the realms of possibility, and remain the same person. Yeah. I think that there is a certain lie or a certain piece of like school of thought which is a bit like to get anywhere you have to be ruthless you have to be prepared to to cut people out you have to turn your back on stuff you have to be completely self-centered and only think of yourself and when I was told that or where I got that feeling I was really scared it was a bit like I don't want to turn my back on my family I don't want to be somebody else or live a transform my life beyond all recognition I just want to do this job and still maintain my priorities and if you find the right people

the right team get the right advice it's perfectly possible that you can do that and be true to yourself at the same time and involve everybody from your past and bring them along for it. And don't listen to anybody who tells you that you have to turn your back on all that if you want to get anywhere. That's great. Yeah. So remember that. Write that down, folks. Rewind this and write that down. John Bradley, thank you so much for taking some time and doing this with us and i think this movie looks like a juggernaut i mean i mean i'm like i hope we put like at least three more butts in seats uh from this podcast

but oh i'm very grateful if so yeah it's such a gigantic movie, and you look like you're – I just hope it does wonderful, wonderful things for you. Oh, thank you, Andy. You are welcome. Thank you for having me. It's genuinely lovely to get to speak to you again. Yes, thank you. I hope we can do it again one day.

The same, and we will. I will see you around campus. So thank you very much. Absolutely. And thank all of you out there for listening. We'll be back next week. Thanks. Zahayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.