Kristian Nairn is best known for his role as the lumbering and loyal servant Hodor in Game of Thrones. He was one of the series’ most popular characters despite only uttering one word (repeatedly) during the series. He has now written a memoir, Beyond the Throne: Epic Journeys, Enduring Friendships, and Surprising Tales. It weaves together anecdotes from filming HBO’s fantasy series and his own life story growing up as a young gay man in Belfast in the 1990s and becoming a drag queen and DJ before segueing into acting. Nairn was raised in Lisburn and grew up in his maternal grandparents’ home — where he shared a room and a bunk bed with his mother, Pat. His father left when Kristian was a young child, moving to a nearby coastal town. Since then, Nairn’s contact with him has been minimal. When he was 14 he rang his paternal grandmother’s house and asked to speak to his father. She and Nairn’s aunt told him that was not possible but invited him around the following week to meet his father. When he arrived, his father wasn’t there. “I am speechless,” he writes. “I’ve thought about nothing else on the journey here. How he’ll welcome me, what he’ll say. I’ve even dreamed that, if this audition goes well, we can do this meeting regularly.” While watching the EastEnders omnibus, his grandmother and aunt assured Nairn they would call and arrange a subsequent meeting. His father would definitely attend that one, they told him. “Over the next few days, I’m like a jack-in-the-box every time the phone rings… Any day now, it will happen. Any. Day. Now. But days become weeks, and weeks become months. It never comes. Not one single call.” He last contacted his father when he started writing the book, and was doing some soul-searching. “I thought I’m sort of compiling almost like a CV, a list of s**t that I’ve accomplished in my life. And my father knows none of this. So I found out where he lived, not in a weird sort of Kray brothers way,” he says.