Why Game of Thrones writers were desperate for Ed Sheeran to make a cameo

ED Sheeran will appear in season seven of Game of Thrones, with the show’s writers revealing they’ve been chasing him for years for one reason in particular.

ED Sheeran will appear in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones.

The musician’s cameo was revealed during a panel discussion featuring showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and actors Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner.

According to Benioff, they’ve been trying for years to get Sheeran to appear in the show as a surprise for Maisie Williams who adores the singer.

“This year we finally did it,” he told the crowd at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Williams is a self-confessed mega fan of Sheeran’s, saying in 2015: “I love his music. He’s stayed true to himself and never tried to be anything he’s not. He’s very real and honest and a beautiful artist in that sense.”

Sheeran filmed his Thrones cameo last year meaning fans should get to see it in season seven which kicks off on Foxtel on July 16.

The showrunners also told the crowd about some of the behind the scenes pranks they’ve pulled on cast members over the years.

“We wrote a scene for Kit Harington where his face melted off,” Benioff said, according to Vulture.

“There’s a scene in the first season where he fights with a White Walker and it catches on fire and he burns his hand. So we wrote the script so that his upper lip would be all messed up and burnt off and we burned off all his hair. He’s got great hair and a great pout, so we described on the page exactly what his mangled face was going to look like forever. He was a good sport, but you could tell he was really sad.”

Weiss added: “We had a whole story about how HBO thought he felt too Disney, too Harry Potter and they wanted to ugly him up. He bought it for a while until David started laughing.”

Don’t mess with this man’s hair.

Maisie Williams AKA Sheeran mega fan.