Well, anything’s better than being known as the creepy milk boy on “Game of Thrones.”
During the final episode of the HBO fantasy hit Sunday, fans were delighted by the surprise appearance of Robin Arryn (Lino Facioli). Not only had the bratty little lord with a murderous streak grown up, but it was abundantly clear that breast milk had done his body a whole lot of good.
Since Facioli’s foxiness became a meme, the 18-year-old actor has been speaking to multiple outlets about his newfound Neville Longbottom-esque glow-up, and it’s clear that he finds all the attention a bit surreal.
“I’m still a bit like, Is this real?” he told Vulture this week. “To me, I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much. It’s just a funny situation.”
When viewers first meet Robin in Season 1, the boy — who was well past his toddler years — was being breastfed by his mother Lysa Arryn (Kate Dickie). Many viewers were so stunned by the scene that it became the character’s most defining trait.
Facioli, however, who was about 10 when he filmed that introductory scene, says it wasn’t as difficult or stressful as some may think.
“Uh, yeah, I wouldn’t lie to you, it was a new experience,” he told the Daily Beast. “It was curious. But I think at the end of the day, people sort of make it seem like a bigger deal than it really was.”
Facioli also credited Dickie’s professionalism in making him feel way more comfortable filming that kind of scene “in front of a bunch of other people.”
“Kate Dickie was an absolute star who just really made sure, ‘If you’re not feeling comfortable, don’t do it,’” he told the outlet. “So there was someone to guide me through it, to not make me feel immense pressure around this, so it really didn’t affect me as much as people think it did, I think.”
But the stigma wasn’t exactly easy for Facioli. He told Vulture that when he was a younger teenager, he wasn’t “that comfortable with it.”
“But it made me get tough skin and have fun with it,” he said.
But he’s now thoroughly enjoying all the positive attention. Facioli told BuzzFeed News he’s gained more followers on Instagram in the past few days than he’d previously had his entire time on the social media platform. He also told Vulture that to celebrate his hotness (and making it on the final episode, which he wasn’t sure would happen), he and his parents went to dinner.
“I never know how to react with compliments,” Facioli told BuzzFeed. “I love them but it’s always like, how do you react? I really don’t know what to do but I’m enjoying it, I really am.”