Game of Thrones star explains why he took a break from screen acting, and it was nothing to do with his King Joffrey role

He's responsible for bringing one of the most hated characters on television to life, but after he departed from Game of Thrones as the biggest bastard in the Seven Kingdoms, Joffrey Baratheon, Jack Gleeson seemed to vanish off the radar completely. Now he's back in the new Netflix series House of Guinness, from Peaky Blinders' creator, Steven Knight, and he's finally explained what brought him back to the screen.

Stopped by The Hook at the premiere of the new show, Gleeson was asked where he'd been all this time, and it turns out he's been acting, but keeping strictly to the stage before heading back to our televisions. “Thankfully, it wasn’t because I received any sort of abuse from anybody. Thankfully! I know that can happen, sadly," Gleeson said. "People confuse the character with the actor, but after Game of Thrones or even during the show, I was continuing to act, but it was more of just a theatre company that I set up with some friends in Dublin, and I was more into that at that time.”

In the new show, House of Guinness follows the titular Irish family as they recover from the death of Benjamin Guinness, leaving his children to battle over control of the company that is flourishing between Ireland and New York in the 19th century. Much like Peaky Blinders, Knight's latest work does brew a hefty dose of fiction within the fact of this world-famous family tree, and that includes Gleeson's character. Arriving in the third episode of the new show, the former Game of Thrones star plays the fictional character Byron Hedges, who reveals himself to be the illegitimate child in the Guinness family tree and is keen to help push the drink into America.