Pedro Pascal Loved His Brutal 'Game of Thrones' Death Scene. Here's Why

Pedro Pascal's career took off after portraying Oberyn Martell on HBO's Game of Thrones. The character's appearance in the hit series was brief but it made a lasting impact on its fans. Especially his gruesome death. However, for the Chilean-American actor, he has claimed that he is very fond of Oberyn's death scene. When asked how he feels about having one of the most memorable death scenes in Game of Thrones, he told Esquire that it makes him "feel like a boss." The 47-year-old Mandalorian star explained,

"[It] makes me feel like a boss. If I'm actually up there, and if I'm in the top three [most memorable death scenes], I mean...everything thereafter is a bit futile. It's like, what am I doing? Why am I still trying? I did it."

The scene is one of the most gruesome on the show. In the fourth season, Oberyn was killed in a horrific way during a duel where Gregor Clegane, literally, squeezed his head through his eyes until it burst. The scene went to become a memorable part in Game of Thrones history and one of the show's most iconic deaths but did you know that the part could have nearly gone to someone else?

Series co-creator and showrunner David Benioff once called the actor's audition "amateurish." "It's true! I had my friend tape me with my iPhone," the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent star said. "There were so many pages. They sent me like 20 something pages to do, which obviously, in the time that they wanted the tape to be turned in, I wasn't going to be able to memorize all those lines. So the easiest way was for somebody to sit in front of you with an iPhone and then just kind of like have the pages down here and read it casually. And the suckers fell for it. Is that my fault? No, it's theirs," he joked.

The character's death was a memorable death in George R.R. Martin's books as well. Benioff told Variety in 2010, "I mean, we love Pedro. And we loved that character. But his death at the hands of the Mountain was one of our favorite brutal killings from George's books (which feature a few thousand brutal killings, so that's saying something). Part of the reason people remember Oberyn is because he died so horribly." Benioff continued, "And if we hadn't killed him, poor Pedro never could have done Narcos. So, it worked out. Not for Oberyn. But for the rest of us."