Hell may have no fury quite like a Game of Thrones actor scorned. Who wouldn’t be upset at being written off one of the most popular shows on TV? Back in Season 5, actor Ian McElhinney was vocally annoyed when his character, Ser Barristan Selmy, was killed off long before the book version kicked the bucket. Now it’s a Dornishman’s turn. Actor Alexander Siddig—beloved by many for his years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—abruptly met his end at the start of Season 6. But, according to Sidding, that wasn’t always the plan.

Speaking with StarTrek.com, Siddig admitted that originally being cast on the show as Prince Doran Martell was a thrill to him. “It was such a huge thing, and there was so much publicity money,” he recalls. “That’s what I remember, everything was so huge. And actors praying they weren’t going to be killed.”

But no amount of praying could save Siddig from Season 6, Episode 1, in which his character took a dagger to the chest and bled out on the exquisite flagstones of Dorne. The abrupt murder—accompanied by the even swifter deaths of Areoh Hotah and Prince Trystane—came as a shock to viewers but, perhaps, not an unpleasant one. That triple homicide essentially cut Dorne out of the Season 6 plot, and, given how unpopular that location was the year before, that may have been the point.

Show-runners Weiss and Benioff called the actor during the off-season and, as Siddig recalls, said, “So we were going to kill you off at the end of last season [5], but we decided that we’re going to have to kill you off at the beginning of next season [6].” Siddig calls that explanation “wrong”: the actor says he had been contracted for four episodes of Season 6, not one. “If they were going to kill me off at the end of the last season, why would they contract me for those four episodes? Because it costs them money whether I do them or not, so it’s not great business sense to do it just in case.”

Were Dorne and its prince originally meant to play a much bigger role in the narrative going forward? That’s certainly the case in the books, where Doran is still alive and well and plotting against the Lannisters. If Game of Thrones were looking to get rid of the least popular elements of its Dorne plot, though, Doran, Trystane, and Hotah weren’t exactly the first candidates that come to mind. Siddig, for his part, has no end of suggestions about what might have motivated his earlier exit:

Something happened; I have no idea what. There was an enormous amount of fan excitement when I got named to be on the show, and everyone was like, “Oh my god, yes, Doran Martell. He’s going to be great as Doran Martell.” That might have been the kiss of death. Maybe they didn’t want quite that much attention on that character. Maybe they thought, “Well, let’s prove that we’re going to stray from the books. We’re going to do something else, and he will be our first example of that.” Or maybe I just screwed up. Maybe I said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Could that wrong thing have been a leaked spoiler? Siddig gives no indication that this is the case, though he admits he struggled with the heightened security around Game of Thrones, particularly heading into the Jon Snow resurrection season. “Game of Thrones is kind of the king of secrecy and spin and mystery and intrigue, as far as fans are concerned,” Siddig explains. “Because there is such an appetite for gossip, everybody was asking me, ‘Is Jon Snow dead?’ Last season when I did it, I knew Jon Snow was dying because I got the scripts. I couldn’t even tell my wife, so it was infuriating. I don’t like walking around with secrets. I can’t stand it. You just make a deal with the devil.”

And, in Siddig’s opinion, HBO has had to go to great lengths to deal with a modern fan culture that is endlessly thirsty for news of the upcoming season:

Everybody is paranoid about some leak on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube. So I think the secrecy is kind of understandable, but also there is an element of hype about it that makes it… the more secretive it is, the more special it is. And certainly Game of Thrones plays that. They misinform the crowd and they give them tidbits to send them in wrong directions. So, for example, last season, I believe that the first few episodes were stolen and downloaded online, and everybody got to see them before the show actually aired, and everybody was furious at HBO and whatnot. I don’t know if you remember. I am almost positive that those four episodes were leaked by HBO themselves. So there is an enormous amount of spin going on. I can’t tell you that for sure; that’s just my opinion, but it’s games; everybody’s playing these games.

Could contracting an actor for four episodes when you intend to kill him off in one be an effort to send fans in the “wrong direction?” It’s worth noting that HBO has leaked its own content in the past, though, in that case it was likely entirely by accident. HBO declined to comment on Siddig’s remarks. And, as Siddig said, the notion that HBO leaked its own screeners in order to drum up excitement is just the opinion of one man who may or may not have an enormous, jewel-encrusted axe to grind.

But while he may have lost the Game of Thrones, Sidding says he’s won the more important game—that of notoriety. Actors who aren’t leads shouldn’t want to stay on Thrones, he explains, “your schedule gets kind of messed up. You don’t earn as much as you would if you were doing another show, because they’re Game of Thrones, and they don’t have to pay anyone. So it’s kind of a blessing in disguise.” Now Siddig is free to do whatever he wants and gets his profile boosted by his brief stint in southern Westeros. “Being on it at all sticks, and everyone goes, ‘Oh, the guy from Game of Thrones!’ It doesn’t really matter that you weren’t on it very long,” he concludes. Thankfully, HBO gave him a memorable send off.