John Bradley knows what you think. He’s Samwell Tarly. He’s the lovable, stammering, bookish underdog from Game of Thrones, the guy you root for because he’s you—if you had the guts to join the Night’s Watch and survive eight seasons of political horror and ice zombies.
But that version of John Bradley, the one preserved in amber and swords, feels like a different person now. “That character seems like he’s behind glass,” Bradley told me. “I can’t access him anymore.”
He’s not being dramatic. He’s just moved on—most recently to 3 Body Problem, Netflix’s interstellar sci-fi brain-buster from Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who wrote the part of Jack Rooney specifically for Bradley. “It’s as close to me as any character I’ve ever played,” he said, “which was flattering, and terrifying. It’s like seeing yourself drawn by one of those caricature artists—you’re just hoping he’s not a piece-of-garbage loser.”
Spoiler: Jack is not a loser. He is, however, a motor-mouthed Oxford dropout with working-class swagger and a poster of cigar-smoking Che Guevara on his wall. “He’s super opinionated, super bullish,” Bradley admitted. “And yeah… I am like that sometimes.”
That self-awareness becomes key in a show like 3 Body Problem, which refuses to hold your hand through particle physics, quantum drama, Chinese political history, and—just for fun—an alien doomsday simulation. “My friends watched the teaser and said they knew less about the show after watching it than before,” Bradley laughed.
What it is, though, is human. Bradley credits Benioff and Weiss for once again finding the emotional core inside a story that, on paper, reads like a PhD dissertation. “They take these huge, expansive things and make them intimate. Romantic. Personal.”
He was skeptical at first. “They said, ‘We’ve written a part that’s exactly like you,’ and I thought, ‘In Chinese sci-fi? Are you sure?’” But they were. And in doing so, they reframed what audiences expect from science fiction—that it can be dense, yes, but still funny, grounded, relatable. “There’s this idea that you either do something artistically complex or something popular,” Bradley said. “But 3 Body Problem doesn’t compromise. It’s going for both.”
Part of that emotional complexity is the way the show tackles otherness—who we call the enemy, and why. “In alien invasion stories, we always assume we’re the good guys,” Bradley said. “But what if they have justified reasons? What if it’s not that simple?” The show doesn’t bash you over the head with these ideas, but they’re there. “It encourages people to recalibrate how we see each other.”
That also ties into how Bradley sees himself. “People from my background don’t usually become actors, or physicists,” he said. “But I’ve found myself in rooms where I’m not supposed to be. And like Jack, I refuse to feel inferior.”
It’s a second act for him, in more ways than one. Benioff and Weiss launched his career with Thrones, and now they’re helping reboot it with 3 Body Problem. “They started my first act,” he said. “And now they’ve started the second.”
In between, he’s been quietly experimenting. He filmed North Shore, an Australian crime drama where he plays a struggling cop. He starred in the rom-com Marry Me with Jennifer Lopez, which, yes, he knows sounds completely unhinged. And he’s been going to as many concerts as possible—Elton John with his mom, ACDC with his dad, and enough Rolling Stones gigs to pay for Mick Jagger’s orthopedic insoles.
“Getting to take my parents to see the bands they love, that’s one of the best things success has given me,” he said. “Elton never does a bad show. At his age, to still command a crowd like that… it’s inspiring.”
He’s also a Beatles obsessive, if that wasn’t clear from the John and Paul mugs over his shoulder. We ended up talking about Now and Then, the band’s last single, and whether it should’ve been a rocker instead of a ballad. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if it was a foot-stomper?” he said. “But in the end, poignancy was always going to win.”
So yes, John Bradley is grateful. But he’s also hungry. And 3 Body Problem lets him be both things—sentimental and cutting, intelligent and impulsive, deeply grounded and barely holding it together. In short, it lets him be himself. Or at least, a version of himself written by two guys who know him better than most.
“I think they wanted people to see me in a different light,” he said. “And I hope they do.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
