Five seconds (or less) of fame

From BBC dramas to local embarrassing comedies, but mostly, obviously, Game of Thrones, QUB students have been finding fame on the small screen. We tracked down three of these local celebrities to chat with them about the glamorous life of being an extra.

Phil Green – Privates

Phil, a final year film studies student, found fame in the cleverly named BBC military drama “Privates”. Well, part of his body did.

That’s a famous head.

Phil got involved in showbiz through ExtrasNI, who made a Facebook post looking for people interested.

“Half a day, 50 quid! Got to go into an army barracks and stuff where they were filming, which was pretty cool.”

Despite not having long enough hair for Game of Thrones, he made up for it with his Private part, and also by featuring in the concert scene at the end of Good Vibrations.

“Didn’t see myself or get paid for that but Snow Patrol came out and did a free surprise gig after.”

Unfortunately Phil didn’t get any actual face time for his claim to fame in Privates, “just a long awkward walk with the back of my head”

Chris Mercer – Game of Thrones

Of our three celebrities, Chris, a QUB Law graduate, got the most actual face time on screen, when he was one of the bastards tormenting poor Hodor in last week’s episode of Game of Thrones.

Leave him alone!

Chris says that shortly after getting into the show people started telling him he should be an extra, as he has long hair and a beard most of the time anyway, which is pretty much standard for GoT parts.

“So I filled out an application on extrasni.com and they contacted me about a month before the filming season in June/July. The first year I did three days, being one of about two hundred. The second year i was a part of a much smaller group of people so did about 6 days and subsequently got a lot more to do” (One of those things was tormenting Hodor. Poor Hodor)

Extras are told not to speak to the main cast but Chris says that from doing scenes with some of the “big names” on the show he naturally spoke to them a bit. But despite this perk, it’s hard work being an extra.

“It can be pretty tough on the set,” Chris told The Tab. “Especially if you’re in a marching army or the weather’s bad and most of your day will be spent waiting around in between takes. But there’s a great sense of camaraderie among the extras; because what you are all going through is pretty unique, and you spend more time with each other in costume and an imaginary world, there’s some pretty damn good craic.”

The long days mean working 14-16 hours, but for doing more stunts or “featured” extra parts you can be paid more.

“‘Featured’ means you are just very visible or have a couple of lines” Chris explains, “I got to do stuff like taunt one of the actors who was chained up as a prisoner, and also was a dead body dragged through the dirt by Jon Snow”

Taunting poor Hodor and being dragged about by Jon Snow are experiences most of us will only dream of.

Michael Robinson – Game of Thrones

Michael Robinson, an electrical engineering student, got his five minutes of fame in last Monday’s episode of Game of Thrones, where he played one of the slaved freed from Mereen.

“I’m like right in the middle there, you can barely see me. Seven pixels of me on tv for half a second and got paid £90 for it”

Starting on set at an eye-wateringly early 4.30am and working to 7pm, Michael got £85 for his time (and an extra tenner for going topless) “I think if you’re full body naked in the lesbian scenes you get £1500 but I just heard that from a creepy taxi driver. I had to go the day before to get a spray tan so I would look like I’m south eastern European for the Daenerys scenes. There were some students there and some bodybuilders.”

Michael also found out about the opportunity to be featured in the show through ExtrasNI’s Facebook page, where they were looking for “gym enthusiasts and bodybuilders with no tattoos for a days filming”

Speaking from experience, Michael told The Tab “One thing I should say is that the intensity and drama of it is completely removed on set, the camera angles and shots and music and effects add 80% of the intensity, acting only came from like 20% of it.”

“Overall it was boring” says Michael, ruining the magic of the show for everyone. Thanks Michael. “We just sat there and did our terrible acting. We weren’t allowed to look at the actors in case we put them off which was pretty rubbish.”

He says that although the hours were long and it could be boring, he’d definitely do it again. “Getting 0.5 seconds of air time and £90 is worth sitting around for 12 hours.”

The Fall is also currently being filmed in and around Belfast so if you happened to be in Botanic on Friday you might have got a little cameo for Series 2!

Are you featured on tonight’s episode of GoT, or want to tell us about another claim to fame? Email [email protected] to be featured or tweet us your pics @TheTabBelfast!