Growing up in the public eye is tough, especially if you then decide you want to do something 'normal' like go to university. It’s a problem Game of Thrones actor Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark on the show, appears to understand after he opened up about his experience at the University of Birmingham.
In an interview with Esquire Online, Hempstead-Wright revealed that he found it “difficult to make friends” while studying maths and music at Birmingham University.
He revealed that his dorm address was publicly leaked, his every move was tweeted and that his student email was bombarded with “billions of emails”, resulting in the university assigning him a campus police officer.
He said, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have a normal university experience, which is kind of sad. I couldn’t relax and go out and have a drink or get drunk or whatever, because if I did someone would be like: ‘I saw Bran and he was all f****d up’.”
While he said that he knew “people would be excited and there’d be a bit of a fuss” about his presence, the reality was more intense. He said, “I walked in and this girl just looked at me. And I was like: ‘Hello’, and they were like ‘Hi!’. I went down to get some more stuff and when I came back, they’d had like a flat conference to say: oh my god, what the f*ck is going on. We went for dinner and they didn’t actually say anything until, eventually, one of their mates was like: ‘so apparently you’re in ‘Game of Thrones?!’”
Hempstead-Wright didn't have much of a Freshers night either. He said, “I went out to some awful club night, and it was just... a massacre.”
Although we doubt it was quite on par with the HBO show's gory spectacles, student newspaper The Tab swiftly reported Hempstead-Wright's enrolment and revealed he had a student email address. Twitter users also tracked his every move, from his appearance at a Freshers ball to his movements in university halls. He couldn't even go to the bathroom without being papped as user @danscothern21 wrote back in 2017, "As if I've actually just met Bran Stark in the Brum student union toilets".
Hempstead-Wright added, “Because your email is public domain, I got like, billions of emails from people going: 'Hi Three-Eyed Raven!’. I was just trying to find out where my next lecture was.”
After an unhappy couple of months, Hempstead-Wright eventually left the university. He said, “I had the nicest flatmates. But it made it quite difficult to make friends. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have a normal university experience, which is kind of sad.”
With the final series of Game of Thrones set to premiere on April 14, the world will be Hempstead-Wright’s oyster as he’ll have more time for other projects.
Whether we’ll see him returning to university or moving onto another television series, one thing is for sure: the Game of Thrones legacy is likely to be a long one.
Read the full interview on Esquire Online.
