These days, George R.R. Martin is well-known as the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the epic series on which HBO’s Game of Thrones — which returns to TV on April 6 — is based. But back in the late ’80s, he was working on a very different project.
Martin was a writer for the TV series Beauty and the Beast, which ran for three seasons starting in 1987 and starred Ron Perlman as Vincent, a man who’s part lion and falls for a beautiful NYC attorney. (It sounds ridiculous, but Perlman actually won a Golden Globe for the performance, and the show was twice nominated for best drama.) In the Season 1 episode “Fever,” the show also featured none other than George R.R. Martin himself. Skip ahead to 1:40 in the video above, to see him convincingly consume a sandwich as a restaurant patron.
The book he’s reading is by George R.R. Martin, naturally. It appears to be a 1986 edition of Sandkings, a story he first published in the magazine Omni in 1979.
As for the sandwich? No clue what’s inside.
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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com