Musician Ed Sheeran has been cast in an upcoming role on Game of Thrones.
Sheeran tweeted the news on Sunday, March 12, writing, "guess the cats out of the bag." He provided a link to a Vanity Fair story discussing his upcoming, currently unspecified cameo role for the seventh season of HBO's Games Thrones scheduled to premiere July 16, 2017.
The Vanity Fair article mentions the sweetly charming reason Sheeran has joined the cast for Game of Thrones. Creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff knew actress Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) is a mega Ed Sheeran fan so as a surprise for her, they invited him to the set during filming.
"For years, we tried to get Ed Sheeran on the show to surprise Maisie and this year we finally did it", Benioff told The Guardian.
While on set, "The Shape of You" singer wound up filming a small role. It is not yet known what role or how recognizable he will be.
Game of Thrones fans not only have season seven, featuring Sheeran to look forward to, but also season eight which is set to be out in 2018. In addition to announcing the pop singer's cameo, it has also been revealed that the final and eighth season for the HBO series only features a six episodes to end the series and will tie all the loose ends.
"From the beginning we've wanted to tell a 70-hour movie," Benioff explained. "It will turn out to be a 73-hour movie, but it's stayed relatively the same of having the beginning, middle and now we're coming to the end."