And here’s a link to photos of the actors. Scroll down from the photos to see who they’re playing. I think they’ve done a great job with casting – some of these are exactly like I pictured them. What do you think?
ETA: Don’t read the comments under the photos – there are spoilers!
LOVE LOVE LOVE the guy they got for Khal Drogo. I saw a picture of him on Winter Is Coming yesterday and I thought it was one of those fan-generated concept art pictures of what they wanted him to look like. He’s perfect.
The kids were all pretty well-cast too, especially Sansa, Arya, and Joffrey.
I also wonder how they’re going to handle some of the flashback scenes to young Robert and Ned. Someone suggested that they use the same actor who ends up playing Renly to also play young Robert, and I thought that was genius.
That cast looks pretty good. I had seen some of the earlier ones, but now that we’ve got a complete cast… well, I’m still very impressed. I don’t know many of the actors, but those I do (Peter Dinklage and Mark Addy) are actually exactly the guys I pictured.
The (small) criticism would be that Jaime Lannister’s actor has a big nose… takes away from him supposedly being super-handsome, and also makes him not look like a twin to Cersei.
No token black guy? :eek:
“Ros the red-headed whore”?
Please, someone refresh my memory.
I searched a few of the websites and couldn’t find a Ros who was a whore. The Tower of the Hand site has a very comprehensive character list – nothing. There were some whores, but none named Ros. Or Rose, or Rosalyn, or Rosette.
Could she be the woman that Tyrion had in his tent on the field of battle? I can’t remember her name.
I think her name was Shae.
Thanks for posting this AuntiePam - although it’s sad to see how much I’ve forgotten of the book in that I can’t remember some of the minor characters 
Some dodgy looking castings IMO: Couldn’t stand Sean Bean as Eddard when it was first announced but I’m warming to it. He has the right sort of lean look for the Lord of Winterfell, but he’s just won’t be able to bring Eddard’s coldness to the part. Eddard has a lonely, cold dimension that will be completely lost with Bean. It’s probably good for the series though that they’ve got a credible leading man-type of actor on board.
Mark Addy is a joke as Robert - I’ve seen him a lot on British TV and he doesn’t come close to having the minerals needed for this sort of Falstaffian role. Lacks the stature as well, Robert is a monster of a man.
Just going off the stills the actors for Jaime and Jon look poor choices - but I’ve not seen their work so could be completely wrong. Jaime in particular looks a bit rugged for the part and what a proboscis!
Rory McCann as the Hound is also a stretch, but only because I’ve seen him a lot in TV and he plays genial gentle giants really well. Hard to see him showing the malice and cynicism of the Hound.
Real standout choice for me is Lena Headey as Cersei - she could be brilliant in that role.
The top 7 are all actors that I know and really like, except for Merchant, who I’ve only seen as Georgiana in Pride and Prejudice. It looks like a great cast.
I enjoyed Coster-Waldau in New Amsterdam, and I’m looking forward to seeing him play Jaime, who is one of my favorite characters. Although he doesn’t become truly fascinating until later in the series.
I will definitely need to re-read the first book before the show starts.
Dammit, I refuse to get HBO for this. But how can I not? Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo? How do I pass that up? I managed to go to a friend’s house to watch True Blood all this last season, but I don’t know if I can convince her to watch this.
I really don’t know about Lena Headey as Cersei. I like the actress, but she just doesn’t seem right to me. Maybe if they stuck a blonde wig on her, I’d feel better about it. I can’t say I’m crazy about that kid playing Jon, but I should see him in action before I really complain. But Bran is adorable, just as it should be.
And maybe I should suck it up and finally read the fourth book. I still haven’t gotten around to it.
I’m guessing they merged Shea with another character (the prostitute Jamie hired for them when they were kids perhaps). Am looking forward to this, but its going to cost HBO a fortune. It has a bigger cast and a larger number of sets then Rome did, and that ended up costing them to much $ to continue.
Simplicio, isn’t this a co-production with the BBC? Maybe they’re rolling in dough.
Draelin, just buy the series on DVD. It’s cheaper than getting an HBO subscription for watching a series.
Except that this is the cast for the pilot, which will probably only cover the first few chapters of Book 1 - I doubt they’ll even get as far as King’s Landing. Shea doesn’t come along until much later.
But … but then I can’t participate in the threads! 
If they merged the character with Tyrion’s other prostitute-lover, then she might be covered in an early flashback to establish the backgrounds of the Lancasters. Just a guess, though.
Rome was also a co-production with BBC (and Italian public broadcasting as well)
On the other hand, Tudors is on its fourth season, and has had some fairly big-name actors, so I guess it can be done. Tudors can eek by with some fairly homogenous sets though (and crummy writing, IMHO), Game of Thrones is going to need at least Winterfell, Kings Landing, The Wall and the Mongol (or whatever the mongol equivalents were called) encampment
I have no idea who Gared and Will are either. Could be some newer characters written in to provide some exposition.
They were the two guys in the prologue with Waymar Royce.
Maybe it’s not comparable, but I just watched the Making Of documentary for HBO’s Band of Brothers. They CGI’d stuff that I wouldn’t have guessed was CGI. Every village and town where we saw Easy Company was just one large set – the same 10-12 buildings were redressed to make them look Dutch or Belgian or German, repaired after being blown up so they could be blown up again. And the forest outside of Foy was all inside an airplane hangar.
But even that cost $120 million. I wonder if HBO still has that kind of money.