Barristan’s Actor is a Disappointed Fan
Ian McElhinney, the actor who portrayed Barristan Selmy, was even more upset about his character’s death in season five at the hands of the Sons of the Harpy, as he told fans at the 2015 London Comic Con. A fan of George R. R. Martin’s novels, McElhinney knew that in the books Barristan becomes a point-of-view character who rules Meereen in Daenerys’s absence after her escape on Drogon, but the showrunners had different plans for the character, perhaps to make way for Tyrion’s arrival as Dany’s advisor.