Game of Thrones May Have Had an On-Set Feud with Two Stars

Considering how famously tumultuous the world of Westeros is, one ought to be surprised at how close the ensemble cast of Game of Thrones actually is in real life. Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams (Sansa and Arya Stark, respectively) remain good friends to this day, as do Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey (Tyrion and Cersei Lannister). In one of the sweetest examples of life imitating art, Kit Harington and Rose Leslie, who breathed life into the doomed romance between Jon Snow and Yggrite, are happily married.

But maybe the show’s second most notable on-set romance didn’t prove quite as lucky. For years before Game of Thrones began, Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn (sellsword Bronn) were in an on-and-off-again romantic relationship until a particularly messy breakup in 2014. For years, rumors have run rampant that their falling out bled onto the show’s sets and that Headey allegedly refused to share any scenes with Flynn. But while it’s true that they never shared a scene together after the fourth season, is there any truth to these rumors?

How Did the Breakup Rumors Start?

In 2019, a week before Game of Thrones’ series finale premiered, British magazine The Sun published an article that Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn hadn’t filmed any scenes together after falling out in the midst of their breakup. Fans of the show noticed admittedly strange occurrences on screen, most notably in Season 7’s “The Dragon and the Wolf,” which sees several different factions meeting with Cersei in King’s Landing and with Bronn conspicuously absent from the scene.

Particularly after the fourth season, the show seemed to go out of its way to keep Bronn away from King’s Landing. In Season 5, he joins Jaime Lannister on his trip to Dorne to secure House Martell’s loyalty to Cersei’s cause. Bronn remained Jaime’s on-screen partner for most of the show’s remainder, most notably when he saves the Kingslayer’s life from a dragon attack in Season 7.

But while these coincidences viewed together are a bit weird, are they necessarily indicative of on-set drama? Even in the show’s first half, which most prominently featured Bronn in King’s Landing, he never had that obvious on-screen dynamic with Cersei. He regularly shared most of his screen time with Tyrion, and it never felt dramatically necessary for him to interact with Cersei. Of all the problems Game of Thrones’ final two seasons had (and they are myriad), the show’s utilization of Bronn is incredibly low on that list.

Jerome Flynn Insists There Was No Personal Drama

Most importantly, Jerome Flynn has explicitly denied these rumors. During an appearance at Nashville’s Con of Thrones in 2019, when a fan asked a question about the breakup rumors, Flynn responded, “We were actually in the same scene together, and the last time I saw Lena we were speaking, so I wouldn’t believe everything you read… Lena is a wonderful person and actress. I think the world of her.” For what it’s worth, Lena Headey herself has never responded either way to the rumors.

Of course, Flynn could simply be trying to defuse a tense situation, but we have no way of knowing whether that’s true. And while it’s a strange coincidence how Bronn and Cersei never interact after Season 4, it’s also not inherently indicative of anything. Not to mention, even to this day, we still know surprisingly little about how production went down in the show’s final seasons. As such, while either argument about the breakup seems plausible, there’s no way we can know for sure, and we probably will never know until years down the line. Game of Thrones is streaming on Max.