~*various Game of Thrones spoilers below*~
While Aidan Gillen earned many fans from his turn on HBO's The Wire, he's garnered himself a bit of a hate following with his role as Littlefinger on Game of Thrones. Through the show's seven seasons, he's revealed to have been the instigator of many of the show's escalating events, including the escalating event of former-former-Hand of the King Jon Arryn's poisoning death.
And in an interview with the New York Times, Gillen speaks on Littlefinger's most consistent goal: his seeming obsession with Sansa Stark, which arose out of his previous romantic infatuation with mama Catelyn Stark.
Starting with latest episode "Eastwatch," it seems that Littlefinger is turning his scheming into splitting up the reunited Stark siblings. To borrow from Regina George, why is he so obsessed with them?
"There's always something more to it when it involves the Starks, given his history with Catelyn Stark and that rejection, and that that's what's driving him. But I wouldn't say the undermining of the Stark family has been a goal. It's opportunistic," Gillen shared. "He couldn't have foretold that Arya was going to show up again, and that Bran was going to show up again. He has played his part in the rise of the Starks, showing up last season with the Knights of the Vale, but he will also undermine it and exploit it. That's what he's doing — he's trying to drive wedges between all of them."
But for all his vision boarding of him with a Stark woman by his side, Gillen insists that Littlefinger's plans for Sansa aren't actually as creepy as, y'know, romantically grooming her to become his bride: "I'm not really playing a romantic interest there. I know that's how it appears, but it's something slightly different."
As for who threatens Littlefinger in Westeros the most? "The most immediate threat would be whoever he's manipulating on a day-to-day basis. But he's quite clever about that. Varys and Littlefinger are two guys who each really know what the other is up to.
So there's always a threat from Varys, even though we haven't seen them together for awhile. Bran is another great threat — of course Littlefinger clocked exactly what Bran said when he repeated that 'Chaos is a ladder.' It was an unsettling moment, for sure."
Read the whole interview here.
