This article was originally published April 13, 2014.
What more is there to say?
It’s a damn shame, really. Never again will we hear that snotty little voice we’ve all learned to hate. Throughout his 32-episode run, actor Jack Gleeson has given King Joffrey a lot of hatable traits, but none more grating than his unique whine. In scene after scene, whenever that fair-haired product of Lannister incest got upset, vindictive, scared, or just plain tired, his voice would lilt into a sneering, snotty, squeal. It was hard not to squirm watching at home.
Talking with Vulture’s Nate Jones at New York Comic Con, Gleeson explained that there was no grand design to the affectation he created for his character: “I just kind of say the lines in a mean way. I don’t really get into the emotions too much, ‘cause I’d probably go crazy.”
Whatever his process, he landed on a haunting embodiment of Joffrey that drew praise from no less than show creator D.B. Weiss, who told Entertainment Weekly, “Jack’s the nicest person on earth probably and is so thoughtful; he’s funny, he’s decent to people. And yet he has this unfailing sense of what the most horrible person in the world would be like and how he would say a line — because he always gets it right.”
That voice was truly something to behold, and we’ve compiled a supercut of all the times Gleeson used it, just so you can get one last hate-watch in before you say goodbye to Joffrey forever.
