Jim Broadbent has been tapped to join the cast of HBO’s medieval fantasy series Game of Thrones for the show’s seventh season.

Jim Broadbent Joins ‘GOT’

Game of Thrones has added Oscar-winning actor Broadbent to the cast, according to Entertainment Weekly. Though it’s unknown who Broadbent will be playing, the veteran British actor will reportedly have a “significant” role.

Broadbent won an Academy Award in 2001 for the film Iris. He’s perhaps best known to U.S. audiences for playing Horace Slughorn in the Harry Potter franchise and Renée Zellweger‘s father in Bridget Jones’s Diary. He’s also starred in features Time Bandits and Brazil. 

As of yet, no other cast additions for season 7 have been revealed.

Kit Harington and Maisie Williams, who have been starring on Game of Thrones since its first season, recently opened up about what to expect when the show returns next year. Harington, who plays Jon Snow, isn’t certain about what’s to come, but he believes that things will get “very bleak” before they get better — if they ever do.

“It’s important to stress at this point that I haven’t had any scripts, so this is all guesswork for me. I think it’s going to get very bleak before if there is a happy ending,” Harington told The Hollywood Reporter. “If there’s any sort of win or heroic moment for Jon and everyone else, I think it’s going to get very dark before it gets better.”

Harington added, “I think what we might see this season is those White Walkers and that Army of the Dead really come into force. So that’s going to be exciting to see. I don’t know what it means. I think with the whole ‘winter is finally here’ business, it means everyone is going to have a really bad time.”

While Harington hadn’t read any of the season 7 scripts ahead of his interview with THR, Williams has finished them. The actress, who plays Jon Snow’s younger sister Arya Stark on Game of Thrones, took to Twitter after reading the scripts to share her immediate reaction – and it sounds like things are going to get even crazier in Westeros.

“Just finished reading season 7,” Williams tweeted. “S–t gets REAL. I’d start preparing yourselves now.” Williams added, “Scratch that, nothing will prepare you for this. Holy BALLS.”

Game of Thrones‘ seventh season, which will be its penultimate, will premiere sometime next summer.

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