Director Miguel Sapochnik on burying Kit Harington alive, Ian Whyte talks playing Wun Wun

Just when you think you’ve heard it all about Episode 609, “Battle of the Bastards,” director Miguel Sapochnik tells a story to The Hollywood Reporter that would keep you up at night. Talking about filming that horrifying, unscripted crush scene where Jon Snow is nearly trampled to death by his own men, Sapochnik details just what he put actor Kit Harington through to get the perfect shot.

"The production utilized a fake horse as a nook for Kit to get caught under, and then we ran 250 allied troop extras over him with one stunt man lying on top of him that he could both struggle with and would keep him protected in case for any reason things went south. Then Sean Savage, our amazing A-cam operator, sat in there with a camera and someone ready to pull him out if things got hairy, and we literally covered them with extras and stunt men."

Sapochnik likens Kit’s emergence from the pile of bodies to a rebirth, and says that Harington’s worst fear is being buried alive. There must have been a ton of trust between the actor and the director for Harington to be willing to do that. Happily, it paid off with a remarkable scene.

He also talked a bit about what he called “the fog of war”: that moment in the thick of battle where Jon stops being a noble hero and just starts wrecking people.

"Our idea was that after the chaos subsides, Jon must fight to survive, but when his men are killed in front of him, it kind of breaks something in him and he becomes somewhat of a monster himself."

Elsewhere, what if I were to tell you that one man had played five different roles on Game of Thrones, and what if I were to tell you that each one of those roles was memorable? Enter Ian Whyte, who just ended his time on Thrones as everyone’s favorite giant, Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun (Wun Wun for short).

Before taking on the role of Wun Wun, Whyte had played an unnamed White Walker in the very first episode of the show. In Season 2, he portrayed Ser Gregor Clegane, and then another White Walker. In Seasons 3 and 4, he played the giant Dongo. And in Seasons 5 and 6, he’s been Wun Wun, until Ramsay fired an arrow into his eye.

The Independent got a chance to talk to the 7’1” Whyte, who was once a basketball player before a chance role in Alien vs. Predator inspired him to shift careers, about his last moments on the show, and what’s next. “He had a humanity, if a fantastical character like that can actually manage it,” he said of Wun Wun. “I really felt for the guy.”

And how did the show achieve the effect of, say, Wun Wun smacking a horse in the face so hard it falls over? Whyte explains the effects involved:

"It’s actually not motion capture, we do it all for real against green screen in the studio. It’s quite an intricate process because we have to match everything that’s shot before – all the human action, the big battle – with what I then later do. So they know where the horse is going to be, it’s just a case of overlaying my performance on top of the existing footage."

And for the record, a tennis ball on a stick stood in for the horse.

Will Thrones use him for anything coming up?

"I don’t know about anything that’s coming in the future, fingers crossed!"

Whyte also said that, so far as he knew, Wun Wun was the last of the giants. But he did say there were plenty of White Walkers, so perhaps there will be more for Whyte to do in the Seasons 7 and 8. Let’s hope so.