Game of Thrones' Season 5: Meet some of the new cast members 

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LONDON – Anyone who’s married into a large, tight-knit family knows how daunting it can be to fit in. Particularly when there’s deception, incest and murder involved. Makes for seriously awkward conversation around the dinner table.

But for some of Game of Thrones’ newest cast members, being enveloped in the bosom of the epic fantasy drama’s massive clan has been nothing short of a dream come true. A dream involving scorpions, strippers and self-inflicted whip wounds.

The fifth season of HBO’s Emmy-winning phenomenon premieres April 12, introducing several new places and faces. For the first time in the series, fans will see the sun-baked kingdom of Dorne – filmed primarily in the sumptuous palaces and gardens of Seville, Spain – and meet new members of its ruling family, House Martell.

For people with revenge burning in their hearts, the Martells seem an awfully jovial bunch.

“It’s fun doing another big, big, big show,” said a grinning Alexander Siddig, who plays Game of Thrones’ Doran Martell, the Prince of Dorne. Star Trek fans will remember Siddig as Deep Space Nine’s charming Dr. Julian Bashir, while 24 buffs know him as reformed terrorist Hamri Al-Assad from that show’s sixth season.

Joining the massive Game of Thrones family – that’s 166 cast members, 5,000 extras and more than 1,000 crew for this season alone – was surprisingly easy. Because unlike a brand new series, where there’s always uncertainty about finding an audience, Game of Thrones is already a success. To put it mildly.

“Everybody is really happy, because they’re all on a hit show,” Siddig said during interviews in London, where the Season 5 world premiere was held last week. “We don’t have that whole year of where we’re wondering whether or not people are going to like the show.”

Needless to say, people are really, really into Game of Thrones. Not only is it the most popular series HBO has ever produced – and this is the network behind everything from The Sopranos to Sex and the City – but its audience has grown significantly with each new season, picking up 1.8 million new viewers between 2013 and 2014 alone.

It’s also the most expensive, and expansive, show on television. Season 5 had crews shooting for 240 days in five different countries, with hundreds of costumes, thousands of props and at least one giant CGI dragon.

But despite its staggering scope, Game of Thrones is a show about intimate, relatable drama. While Dorne’s House Martell must contend with the civil war ravaging Westeros, the family is also dealing with last season’s death of Prince Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) at the hands of Ser Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane, adding to the already bad, bad blood between the Martells and the ruling Lannisters.

“Half of my nation would like to go to war now,” Siddig said of Prince Doran’s mindset. “Should we be going to war? Should I put at risk all the people in my nation? How many people are going to die? These are the things I grapple with.”

English actor and playwright DeObia Oparei, who joins Game of Thrones as Doran’s bodyguard Areo Hotah, said it’s the lack of clearly defined good guys and bad guys that makes the show so universally intriguing.

“This is the kind of show where really, who’s the baddie? Who’s the goodie? It’s so intertwined, just as it is for all of us,” said Oparei, who got his first big break in 2001’s Moulin Rouge.

“I mean, there are parts of us here that are bad and parts of us here that are good. I think the show does that really well,” said Oparei. “One character is seen in the light of goodness for one episode, the next episode they’re seen killing their best friend or reneging on their word. I think that’s what makes it so exciting, and being a character who has that potential is really exciting.”

Oparei knows a thing or two about human nature. The actor, who’s also appeared in Doom, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Dredd, said he’d be totally down for one of Game of Thrones’ notorious nude scenes – “I’d love to show my willy!” – as he’s not a shy man. Not at all.

“Oh yes, I used to be a stripper. I used to be many things,” Oparei said, alluding to seven years of “an incredibly maverick lifestyle” spent in Australia prior to his acting days. “I just felt like I hadn’t lived, I hadn’t seen anything of life. How could I be an actor and not have experienced different parts of life?”

And even with clashing swords and fire-breathing dragons, Game of Thrones mirrors the real world’s complexities and uncertainties in its own way, said Oparei.

“There is a sense that we are all on the precipice of the next danger, and there’s something about the humanity and the fragility of life that Game of Thrones really puts in our faces,” he said.

“At the same time it’s mixed with that escapism of wealth and royalty and heads rolling.”

Among those who want to see heads roll are the Sand Snakes, three of the late Oberyn Martell’s bastard daughters: Obara (Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes), Nymeria (Jessica Henwick) and Tyene (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers).

“Someone very close to us has been taken away,” said Henwick. “And so we go, ‘How can we get them back in the same way? Well, let’s take something away from the Lannisters that they love.’ So that’s where we’re coming from this season.”

Henwick, who politely deflected questions about her role in this year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (“Am I in it?” she asked with a laugh), had to learn how to wield an eight-foot long kangaroo-hide bullwhip to play the no-nonsense Nymeria. She spent hours practicing in the backyard of her parents’ home near London, and has the wounds to prove it.

“I hit myself in the face, I hit myself in the bum, I hit myself in the ankle,” Henwick said. “You don’t feel it, and then afterwards it starts throbbing.”

In one scene, glimpsed in the Season 5 trailer, Henwick must crack her whip near the head of an actor who is buried up to his neck in sand and surrounded by live scorpions.

“They were like, ‘Right, Jess, you have 10 minutes to do your whip movement. Don’t hit the camera, don’t hit the camera crew, don’t blind the actor and please don’t kill these scorpions.”

As three of Game of Thrones’ newest family members, the women became fast friends on their first day of shooting, said Sellers. “We didn’t know anyone. We’re brand new. Luckily the three of us had each other.”

And if HBO is smart, maybe they’ll capitalize on the bond between these sexy, deadly on-screen sisters.

“We improvised our own little scenes that had nothing to do with the script,” Sellers said. “It would make an amazing spinoff.”

A QUICK LOOK AT GAME OF THRONES\' FAMOUS WEAPONS (AND THE ACTORS WHO HANDLE THEM BEST)

LONDON – In the world of Game of Thrones, those who live by the sword tend to die by the sword. Or the axe, or the flail, or the crossbow, or the dagger…

Creating this arsenal of armaments falls to Game of Thrones weapons master Tommy Dunne and his team, who have crafted a staggering 400 to 500 weapons for the show.

“You don’t have much time to wallow in your glory,” said Dunne, a mechanical engineer turned weaponsmith for film and television. (That’s him seen reforging Ned Stark’s greatsword into two new blades in the opening shot of the Season 4 premiere.)

In interviews held in London leading up to the April 12 debut of Game of Thrones Season 5, Dunne showed off some of the show’s most famous weapons, letting us go hands-on with King Joffrey’s Widow’s Wail and its sister blade, Oathkeeper, given to Brienne of Tarth by Jaime Lannister. We also carefully wielded Arya Stark’s slim blade Needle, and a hefty ice sword (made from a clear acrylic material) used by the White Walkers.

These so-called hero props – heavy versions used for close shots where the swords must look and act like real weapons – are fine, intricate pieces of work, only lacking a truly sharp edge. Dunne said despite the number of weapons in play on the show, there’s never been a major injury.

In fact, some of the veteran cast have become quite adept with their weapons, Dunne said, including Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as the now one-handed Jaime Lannister, Kit Harington as Jon Snow and Maisie Williams as Arya Stark.

Iain Glen, the actor who plays Daenerys Targaryen’s exiled adviser Ser Jorah Mormont, will join the ranks of skilled swordbearers in Season 5. “This season is a very physical one for Ser Jorah, he’s in very dangerous situations throughout the season,” Glen said. “He takes enormous risks.”

Unlike Jaime Lannister, though, all of Glen’s appendages remain intact. For now. “You’re in very safe hands with the stunt coordinators.”

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