It goes without saying that when you’ve had the privilege of working on one of pop culture and TV’s biggest phenomenons, you might want to keep a memento or two from that experience.
For the cast, although it was frowned upon, some of the actors got creative with how and what they liberated from set during their final seasons of filming — and some were far more successful in their hauls than others.
“I got to keep my corset,” , a.k.a. Sansa Stark, told PEOPLE. “And friendships that will last a lifetime.”
Turner’s onscreen sibling, , who plays Arya Stark, echoed that sentiment. “I got to keep a lot of memories. And some cuts and bruises.”
Iain Glen, who played Dany’s trusty confidant Ser Jorah Mormont, revealed that he kept some of his character’s jewelry.
“I kept a couple of rings. Ser Jorah had a kind of Dothraki element to his attire, and so they were easily takeable,” he confessed. “So I took them, yeah.”
“I stole a pair of waterproof socks. Which I feel like I can now confess,” said Hannah Murray, who plays Gilly. “I was doing another job that was a very low budget film, called and we were filming on the beach and my feet were getting soaked. I was going back and forth to do in between, and I thought, ‘I have to get these waterproof socks,’ because they didn’t have the budget for them on this other movie.”
Carice van Houten, who played Melisandre, “The Red Woman,” also made off with a practical item: “I actually have thermal underwear,” she said. “Because [Melisandre’s] necklace wasn’t working.”
Kristian Nairn, who played Hodor, walked away with a key piece of his character’s story: “I took a little piece of the door,” he shared. “[The door] was already broken, it broke off in my hand, and a little piece with the false snow on that, so I kept that, and it was in my script, so I kept a piece of that forever.”
Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark, ended up with a few random, but potentially useful, mementos. “On my last day on set, I ran through the set like, ‘God, this is my last moment on ,’ grabbed whatever I could, and I got a wooden spoon, a straw bowl, and a wooden tub. So I grabbed kitchen utensils.”
“I took a little chess piece like from the map room,” said Jacob Anderson, who plays Greyworm. “I didn’t take it. It was given to me. That’s what I’ve got at home. It looks a little bit like an Unsullied and it looks a little bit phallic, ironically.”
A couple cast members weren’t quite so lucky/stealthy.
“I wanted to keep the [dragon] eggs dammit, but they weren’t giving them!” Emilia Clarke, a.k.a. Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen, admitted to PEOPLE. “I think everybody else nicked something, I didn’t get to grab anything.”
Clarke appeared to be right — most everyone else seemed to have grabbed something, save for John Bradley, who plays Samwell Tarly.
“I never took anything. I’m so keen to play by the rules. I’ve got a real phobia of getting into trouble. But I think if there was one thing that I was going to take it’d be the thimble that Sam’s mother gave him and comes into play in season 2. There’s a lot of sentimentality tied up in that, it’s the last remnant of a loving relationship that he had before he met Gilly, and there’s so much projected onto it as a relic and what it means to him,” explained Bradley. “So I would have taken that but I’ve not seen it since season 3.”
The undisputed winner of the Game of Stolen Stuff is Liam Cunningham, a.k.a. Davos Seaworth, who may/may not have a whole room in his house full of goods.
“I haven’t left anything, I’ve taken everything!” Cunningham gleefully admitted. “I’ve taken loads of stuff, you don’t have long enough. I have swords, my little finger bag, I liberate, of course! I liberated it! I got in just before the lockdown started. It’s now like the end of , you know when they’re pushing the covenant of the ark, into this big huge warehouse to be hidden away forever? My place is like that now, with stuff from . eBay’s gonna be on fire in a couple of months.”
The final episode of airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.
