(Warning: big season 3 spoiler below. In the first line. It came out 6 whole years ago)
Jaime Lannister had his hand sliced off in Game of Thrones season 3, but it was a very different kind of chop that landed him in the most trouble.
Before actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau started filming season 4, he decided to play a prank on his HBO bosses by pretending that he’d impulsively lopped off his famous flaxen hair.
"There'd been a lot of talk about Jaime's hair in the early seasons – his long golden locks," he told Digital Spy. "Once he lost his hand, I thought he should maybe have a haircut. And then I thought, 'Why don't I just pretend?'"
"This is five, six seasons ago – I sent them an old picture where I had a buzz cut," he continued. "I sent a long letter where I explained I'd taken control of my character and I want to be respected. I said that my integrity as an artist was at stake!"
Did HBO take the news well? HBO did not take the new well. There was a period of silence before he received a frantic call from an assistant director,
"They all believed it," he said, but not everyone was laughing. "They'd also called my manager. HBO had started to talk about suing me and it had gotten out of control."
The character eventually ended up with a French crop anyway, so the showrunners must have actually come around to Coster-Waldau’s trolling logic. All’s well that ends well.
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