Highlights from the IGN Q&A with George R.R. Martin and Ryan Condol at the Jean Cocteau

On Thursday night, A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin hosted Colony co-creator Ryan Condal for a special Q&A that was broadcast live on Periscope. We stayed up through the late hours of the night to watch the event unfold so that we could report the highlights to you. I will warn you: if you were expecting a lot of Game of Thrones questions, then you will be disappointed. This event was billed as a Colony Q&A, and that’s how it shook-out…the fact that George R.R. Martin hosted it at his theater may have played into some sort of fantasy that his fans (me) had that he would give us some updates on The Winds of Winter.

Here’s a few of the highlights from the Q&A:

• A question from the internet was asked to both Condal and Martin: “Most damning mistake a character has made?” George instantly uttered the Stark family name. The crowd laughed.
• Condol’s favorite minor characters in Martin’s works: Sandor Clegane.  Martin’s: Bronn and Shae (he remarks that television made both better).

• George says he falls back on Scottish history for a lot of A Song of Ice and Fire inspiration. (The Red Wedding in particular).
• There was a fun moment when Condol was asked how he was going to approach unveiling the big alien reveal on Colony. Martin hilariously interrupted with a fun story about how battles get bigger the higher a show’s ratings get. He mentioned that, in Season 1 of Game of Thrones, we saw almost nothing of the Battle of the Green Fork, since Tyrion was knocked out beforehand. Fast-forward to Season 5, and “Hardhome” is huge and epic. Condol commented that “Hardome” probably cost what nine episodes of Colony cost to make.
• Finally, and I kid you not, the lovable George R.R. Martin used the term “Gang-bang” to describe a group of writers hurriedly working together for a period of time to get a script together.

Like I mentioned, this was not meant to be a Game of Thrones Q&A, and I think that somewhere along the way, that got lost in translation. However, Martin was gracious enough to answer enough Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire questions to keep it mildly interesting for his fans. There was one instance where a massive chance for a great question was left on the table. The moderator asked both Condol and Martin which character they were currently writing they most enjoyed. Condol answered first, and just as Martin seemed he was about to answer, some guy in the crowd blurted out a new question. Oh, the humanity.

Here’s the link to the video of the full event.