“A book like that is almost going to be treated like a film script,” said Matthew Rubery, author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book.ĭotrice could be a nobleman from Meereen, a smuggler from Flea Bottom, and a Dornish warrior, carrying each of their stories with equal weight-though not all would say his renditions were pleasing. Audiobook narrators have long been divided into two kinds of performers-neutral voices and theatrical voices-and there’s little surprise about which one Dotrice fell under. Along with the other four books, he is perhaps the only person to have performed every single character in Thrones’ known world. His recording of A Game of Thrones was recognized by Guinness World Records for having the most “distinct and distinguishable” character voices in an audiobook, at 224. From 2003 to before his death in 2017, he recorded more than 200 hours of narration for the five published books in the series. Martin may have created Westeros and populated the lands from beyond the Wall to across the Narrow Sea, but for audiobook listeners, Roy Dotrice spoke all of it into existence. “Everything he’d learned was not on the page anymore,” Karen says. A new script had been slipped under his door the writers had revised the entire part. “So he’s just going off to bed and there’s a rustle under the door,” Karen recalls. He had gone over the script dozens of times back in Los Angeles, but all that changed once he got to Ireland. Yet at 88 years old, memorization had become difficult. Having performed the five audiobooks in the series on which the TV show is based, he wasn’t just keenly familiar with the story, but had a unique connection to the material as well. Dotrice had been acting almost his entire life, on both stage and screen.

He was nervous.īefore leaving for the 2011 shoot, Dotrice had worked hard to memorize the script for the role of Wisdom Hallyne, the pyromancer who guides Tyrion and a skeptical Bronn through the wildfire reserves of King’s Landing.

It was the middle of the night and her father, Roy Dotrice, was calling from Ireland, where he was getting ready to make a cameo in Season 2 of Game of Thrones. Karen Dotrice remembers being fast asleep when the phone rang.

A feast for crows roy dotrice