President Barack Obama is supposedly a huge fan of the HBO series Game of Thrones. He gets advance episodes provided to him by the network and has expressed his concern over the fate of a certain Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch to frequent Thrones director David Nutter.
But in a new GQ interview with Bill Simmons, who recently landed at HBO as his own site, Grantland, went down, the president admitted he’s not the GOT expert he claims to be.
Here is their exchange about the show:
Which character do you identify with?My favorite character is probably…the dwarf, what’s his name?Oh, yeah. Peter Dinklage’s character.The problem with Game of Thrones, though, is that I don’t remember the names of any of the characters.I don’t, either.I remember the characters, so when I watch it, I know exactly what’s going on. But if you read a review of the show afterwards and they’re mentioning such and such, the only one I remember is Jon Snow, because I can pronounce Jon Snow.
This was enough to send admitted fantasy nerd Stephen Colbert into a near rage during his monologue Wednesday night.“What’s his name, Mr. President?” Colbert asked, referring to Obama’s “favorite” character. “His name is Tyrion Lannister of the House Lannister, youngest son of Lord Tywin Lannister. ‘What’s his name?’ One-time richest man in the Seven Kingdoms and Lord Paramount of the Westerlands. I thought you followed politics, sir!”“You’re telling us you don’t even remember Hodor’s name?” Colbert asked later. “Well, I guess that’s understandable, he only says it like 50 times per episode!”“Most damning of all,” according to Colbert, was Obama’s suggestion that “Jon Snow” is the only character name from the show that he can pronounce. After all, “Nobody in all of Games of Thrones has a stranger name than Barack Obama.”
