Hannah Murray followed the number one rule of getting into acting early and pulled off the most successful attempt at “Secure your bag and run” since Jack Gleason did the same as Joffrey Baratheon in the same show as her.
Game of Thrones was the bread and butter of Hannah’s career, and took up over seven years of it, so where has the British actress been since the series ended four years ago?
I’m not answering that right away, but I will tell you that Hannah was born in Bristol, tucked away in the United Kingdom (I think? I don’t know how Britain works) in July of 1989.
While she lived a quiet childhood going to school, she didn’t have much interest in acting until hearing about an audition in a nearby town at the age of seventeen, deciding to go with some friends and see what would happen.
New Skin
Turns out, a lot would happen. The audition led to Hannah Murray being cast in the landmark teen drama Skins, later adapted for the United States unsuccessfully on MTV.
She would play the role of Cassie, one of the first two characters to be cast for the show, and a gentle artist with a troubled mind. She would gain acclaim for her role, becoming a standout of the at the time shocking and realistic look at teen life in the UK.
Her role would last for the first two seasons of the show and a follow-up in the 2013 finale, giving some closure to her character as an adult.
After Skins Hannah decided to get a more diverse acting resume moving, taking up parts in London’s West End dramas before eventually trying to move into the world of Hollywood, filming small parts in psychological thriller Womb and another Burton/Depp team-up in Dark Shadows before landing the part that would keep her going for the rest of the decade, and secure that sweet, sweet HBO money.
Westeros Vacation
Game of Thrones had already made massive waves in television with the first season’s finale showing that nobody was truly safe in the world of Westeros and truly setting events of the series in motion, just in time for Hannah to jump into the mix as Gilly and become a recurring fan-favorite character.
A wildling who is initially pregnant when she meets Sam and is freed by the Night’s Watch, she eventually grows into Sam’s love interest and the de facto real dad to “Little Samwell”. Turns out the series’ goofiest little bookworm was the dad Westeros needed all along.
Her role in Thrones being recurring left her open for plenty of other projects as well, with Murray still popping into shows at West End while taking more movie film roles outside of the series filming.
She would gain acclaim for portrayals in God Help the Girl as well as a featured role in Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit in 2017 among a host of other powerful performances.
We can’t not mention the weirdest decision ever made for a movie in Charlie Says, directed by Mary Harron of American Psycho fame and starring, of all the possible people that could have played Manson, Matt Smith. I applaud the man because he drips charisma no matter what he’s in, but what an odd casting. Anyway, Hannah played just one of Manson’s three devoted female followers (out of many more) for what was a fairly decent psychological drama.
What’s a Quibi, anyway?
Then came the big one, the finale, the Long Night. All bets were off going in on who would survive the last season of Game of Thrones, though not many had “any respect for the plot” as one of the numerous deaths the show suffered that season.
Her character of Gilly would meet a happy ending for the most part, being taken in as Sam’s wife and helping to lead the newest iteration of the Tarley family now that ol’ Dickon was dead. Gotta be a real asshole to name your kid ‘Dickon’ regardless of the fantasy setting.
Hannah Murray made it out of the rubble of King’s Landing, ending up on… oh no, Quibi. She would make her debut on the “Who the hell thought this was a good idea” service of a lifetime on the show The Expecting. Whatever happened to all the Quibi shows anyway? Are they stored away on an iPhone SE somewhere in a vault? Who got custody of Reno 911? What did you do with Alexandre Aja’s Tomie adaptation?! Oh… it all got offloaded to Roku. Weird choice.
Either way, the show got the axe along with everything else Quibi adjacent and Hannah was out on her own again.
Where is Hannah Murray Now?
Though that would prove to be her last appearance other than a video game called Shady Part of Me in 2020, where she would voice the main character.
While she’s occasionally active on Instagram and does appear for Game of Thrones events and cons spontaneously, there’s not a whole lot of information on where she is or what she’s up to now.
Hannah seems to prefer the private life over that of the spotlight, and who can blame her after living through the Game of Thrones finale and Quibi back to back?
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