The MVP: Jacob Anderson Is Transforming Genre Television, One Role At A Time

By Kaiya Shunyata  |  August 21, 2025 | 1:00pm
(Photo: Netflix)
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The MVP: Jacob Anderson Is Transforming Genre Television, One Role At A Time

Editor’s Note: Welcome to The MVP, a column where we celebrate the best performances TV has to offer. Whether it be through heart-wrenching outbursts, powerful looks, or perfectly-timed comedy, TV’s most memorable moments are made by the medium’s greatest players—top-billed or otherwise. Join us as we dive deep on our favorite TV performances, past and present:

In the fifth episode of Game of Thrones’ series-defining third season, audiences were introduced to a character that marked a pivotal shift within the series’ dynamics. Grey Worm, played by the then-relative newcomer Jacob Anderson, comes to us as the leader of the Unsullied, a group of soldiers that Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) has just freed from a life of slavery. As he lifts his helmet and we’re brought face to face with a young man, it feels like we’re watching a star be born. Anderson’s tight jaw gives way to an earnest declaration when he is offered to change his name from the one he inherited during his enslavement. “’Grey Worm’ gives this one pride. “It is a lucky name,” he says. “Grey Worm is the name this one had the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.” It’s here that Anderson first made his mark on the fantasy genre, building a reputation for playing deeply nuanced characters that has since continued on-screen and changed the foundations of fantasy television. 

With his debut on this HBO juggernaut, the actor became one of two central Black characters in a series with a positively massive cast. While it initially seemed as though Grey Worm would remain a background figure, as each season went on, his part in Daenerys’ fight for the Iron Throne became more expansive, marking what often felt like a historic shift in the fantasy genre. The character evolves from a simple, loyal soldier to a man grappling with his past enslavement amid a growing determination that such wrongdoings will never be enacted on others if he can help prevent it. With Anderson at the helm, Grey Worm transformed into one of the series’ most empathetic characters, whose storyline becomes a tale of belonging and love, finding the former with Daenerys Targaryen and her advisors, and the latter with Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel).

In a series where most of the characters met their end before Season 8’s final episode—and during a final season that butchered many of their arcs—Grey Worm stands out as someone who remained true to his roots throughout the show. Anderson’s pure magnetism on screen defied the tragic (and frankly ridiculous) situations writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss put his character through, until Missandei is murdered in one of the series’ most offensive mistakes. When Daenerys snaps and begins to torch King’s Landing in the series’ penultimate episode, we watch Grey Worm twirl his spear, unleashing fury upon the city’s army. His face is determined before it cracks open in pain, giving way to a shaking cry only silenced by Ramin Djawadi’s ominous score. Despite the comparative ridiculousness of this scene, Anderson commands the screen with such sincerity that, for a moment, it’s impossible to question this whiplash of a writing decision. 

While Game of Thrones may have ended with a whimper, Anderson has since gone on to star in one of the best fantasy adaptations in recent memory. With his fantastic turn as Louis de Pointe du Lac in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, the actor continues to deliver one of this decade’s most astonishing performances. In its first episode, Anderson delivers a monologue within a church after a night of blood-drunk sex with the irresistible vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), yelping from the pews in desperation for his soul to be cleansed. “I laid down with a man,” the actor gasps through tears. “I laid down with the Devil. And he has roots in me. All his spindly roots in me. And I can’t think nothin’ anymore but his voice and his words.” It’s with this confession that Anderson proves the screen time he was given on Game of Thrones was not enough—he should have been one of the show’s leading men from the very beginning. 

As Interview with the Vampire progresses, Anderson’s on-screen presence elevates the series from a standard vampire tale, transforming it into an explicit examination of how shame, memory, and desire threaten to haunt even immortals for the rest of their undying lives. As a gay Black man in New Orleans, Louis’ guilt takes center stage, alongside a nuanced exploration of grief after he and his daughter Claudia (Bailey Bass in Season 1, Delainey Hayles in Season 2) attempt to murder Lestat. The tagline for the series’ second season was aptly put: “Memory is a monster,” and Anderson portrays this through each interwoven timeline. In present-day Dubai, Louis’s dismantled memories collide with each other, becoming more spindly than the roots he once viewed his desires as. As the truth slowly starts to seep out of journalist Daniel Molloy’s (Eric Bogosian) pages and into Louis’ current life with the vampire Armand (Assad Zaman), Anderson is forced to portray various, often conflicting emotions in the same scene, in a performance so fragmented at times it appears as if he’s playing several separate versions of the character at once.

Each time Anderson is on screen, it’s impossible not to feel grateful that this is the version of Anne Rice’s work we’ve been blessed with in the 2020s. In race-swapping Louis, the series took a bold risk in exploring how Blackness and queerness intersect, and how these two aspects of Louis’ life come into conflict with his vampirism. It’s difficult to imagine a more perfect actor to unshell each one of Louis’ memories as they threaten to unravel his life, and with this role, Anderson has given viewers one of the most singular representations of the vampire figure since Nosferatu (1922). 

Liike the race swapping that took place in Interview with the Vampire, Netflix’s The Sandman concluded its run with a bold casting choice. The penultimate episode of the show’s final volume sees the Endless being Dream (Tom Sturridge) accepting his impending death and making way for his successor, Daniel, to take his place. Shown to us only as a small baby, the adult version of Daniel is finally revealed, with none other than Anderson—in a surprisingly well-kept bit of secretive casting—standing before us. Dressed in a regal white gown, an emerald pendant necklace, and Daniel’s comic-accurate brown hair streaked with white, Anderson looks every bit the regal, otherworldly being. 

As Daniel is essentially a child stuck in an adult’s body, some performers might struggle with the task of inhabiting this role. Instead, Anderson traipses through each scene as if Daniel himself has come alive from the page, questioning his existence and that of The Dreaming with a pensive childlike wonder. His lilting voice is quite different from Sturridge’s, yet it still holds a dream-like quality to it, making it feel as if these two characters are simply different sides of the same coin. While Daniel in the original The Sandman graphic novels is visibly white, in the series, his father is Black, making him mixed-race. Once again, Anderson is playing a well-known fantasy character being race-swapped on screen, making way for Black people to inhabit not only roles, but universes they have often been shut out of. 

In each of these fantasy universes, Anderson’s presence isn’t just a treat for viewers to watch. Each of these roles is vastly unlike the other, forcing Anderson to learn new languages and accents, command his body with precision, and push himself in a way that transforms these characters from their often slight appearances in their original works to series-defining figures. There is no doubt that each of these roles has, or will soon become, defining moments in Anderson’s already-fascinating career.

Adaptations of the works by some of our most talented fantasy and genre authors are a growing force behind some of modern television’s most successful series. Yet these properties are too often focused almost exclusively on white characters, resulting in Black actors being shut out from the genre for far too long. Despite this, whether it’s an epic show about dragons and ice zombies or a meditative series about vampires, Jacob Anderson is quickly becoming a staple in the genre television space. In an entertainment space that, up until the last decade, seemed desperate to keep itself overwhelmingly white, Anderson has broken down barriers put in place to shut out Black actors. His mark on the genre has not only allowed these fantasy worlds to become more inclusive for actors, but also for the long line of Black fantasy fans who have longed for years—even decades— to see versions of themselves mirrored back at them on screen.

Kaiya Shunyata is a freelance pop culture writer and academic based in Toronto. They have written for Rogerebert.com, Xtra, The Daily Dot, and more. You can follow them on Twitter, where they gab about film, queer subtext, and television.

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.

 
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