Season 6 director Jeremy Podeswa Says First Two Episodes are “Over Halfway Done”
By Ani Bundel
With the Emmy Awards just around the corner, Jeremy Podeswa, who is nominated for directing the most controversial episode of Game of Thrones Season 5, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” has been on and off the interview circuit while working on Season 6. Yesterday, it was YahooTV‘s turn to ask him questions about that episode, including some about the Dornish fight choreography nobody liked (he claims he did his best with the space he had), the Sansa scene every freaked out about (we should note that when asked about the complaints concerning how the show depicts women, he refused to comment), and other subjects he’s previously expounded upon. But it was his comments on the upcoming season that he’s working on now that stood out the most.
I’m directing the first two episodes. I’m more than halfway through already; I’ve got 16 more days left to shoot. We’re shooting in Belfast and Spain, so I’m going back and forth a few times. It’s a very complicated schedule.
Since we know shooting in Spain hasn’t actually started yet, that means that more than half of the first two episodes will be taking place either on sound stages or on sets located in Northern Ireland. Some of those sets include (but are not limited to!) the Winterfell set in Moneyglass, shooting in the countryside areas where Dany was left by Drogon while he had a dragon-sized nap, and shooting in the Quarry that stands in for Castle Black (and where we think they filmed Jon Snow’s funeral.) There have been other scenes too—like Maisie in the harbor, but we know director Mark Mylod was on hand for that, so it’s not part of the first two episodes.
[D]oing the first two episodes is very exciting, but it’s also a little scary. Expectations are always very high at the beginning of the season, and checking in with all of the characters is a daunting prospect. But what’s great about this season is that there’s very little expository stuff. It starts off with a bang and you’re right into the excitement of the story. This is also the first season that’s not based on one of the books. So there’s an enormous fan curiosity of where we’re going to go, and that makes me equally nervous and excited. There have been so many diversions from the original story in the last couple of seasons that I think the audience is ready to go completely off-book.
This lines up with what we also heard from Emilia Clarke last month—that Season 6 is going to be more like Season 4. Instead of setting up the dominoes at the beginning of the season and knocking them down in the final episodes, we’re just going to keep knocking down dominoes set up in Season 5.
As for people being ready to go off book…well, there’s not really any book to go off of now, is there? Apparently this hasn’t just resulted in the show feeling freer, it’s resulted in the producers changing up how they view the season from the beginning:
This season, we did something we’ve never done before: we did cast read-throughs before we started shooting, but we didn’t read the scripts chronologically. Instead, each actor read their characters’ storylines from all 10 episodes. So one day we met and did all of Arya’s scenes, and the next we did all of Cersei’s scenes. That gave us a sense of the arc of the entire season in a really interesting way. Everyone’s got a really great story. You could almost pull out any one character’s story and you’d have a great show, but we’ve got ten of them.
Full disclosure: I’ve done this with both the books and with the blurays of previous seasons, because I am a dork and love seeing how each story stands up by itself. I think it’s fascinating that Benioff and Weiss wanted the cast to do the same. There is one thing I want to know, though—if they only did the Cersei scenes one day, does that mean actors like Emilia Clarke or Sophie Turner got to sit and listen to the read-through of a days’ worth of scenes they’re not part of? Or was this a way to keep the actors who aren’t necessarily privy to what’s happening in scenes outside their own in the dark? (Remember, although the A-list cast get full scripts, some actors who are lower on the food chain have admitted they only get the scenes they’re in, which is one way the show keeps a lock on spoilers.)
Of course, the interview ends with a question about Jon Snow, who continues to be dead, according to all and sundry involved with the production. Podeswa merely responds that “the show picks up where it left off last season.”
So wait, like right where they left off? With Jon still bleeding out in the snow? Because if so….hmmmmm.