Game of Thrones stunt coordinator talks creating the show’s biggest spectacles

Game of Thrones: come for the elaborate plotlines, stay to see someone lose a limb or get set on fire. Stunt coordinator Rowley Irlam and weapons master Tommy Dunne are two of the guys behind the show’s elaborate action sequences. They recently hosted a group of journalists, including people from Express and Radio Times, to teach them how to fight with sword and shield, an opportunity which will soon be open to several UK-based contest winners. “It’s my responsibility to kill everyone,” Irlam joked.

In between sparring sessions, Irlam reflected on the most intense stunt he and his crew ever pulled off: Drogon’s attack on Daznak’s Pit in “The Dance of Dragons.”

"We’ve done a lot of fire stuff, particularly in season five. We set fire to 20 guys in one day and used a 45-ft flame thrower on a motion control crane so we could control the dragon….It was the most amount of people that had been set on fire in one day."

Irlam won an Emmys for his work on seasons 5 and 6. That’s only fair to the guy who broke the record for most people set on fire in a day.

These kind of stunts present dangers, but Irlam is very mindful not to let them get out of hand, although it sounds like there are still a few inevitable bumps and bruises. “Health and safety for us is not a grey area,” he said. “It’s very clear – we endeavor to shoot a sequence that is very dynamic, exciting, looks really dangerous, but it’s never our intention to hurt anyone in the process. And we never do anything recklessly where we go ‘Awww, there’s a 50/50 chance this will go OK.’”

"It doesn’t work like that. It’s 99%. When you’ve got horses, and you’ve got swords, and you’ve got 500 extras and 17 cast all fighting, you do have little tiny nicks and bumps, and hands get knocked by the sword. But we don’t have any big accidents, because we really spend an awful lot of time making sure that everyone knows what’s going to happen next. The secret to safety is communication."

Although it didn’t involve fire (well, not much), Irlam sounds like he’s most proud of his work on the Battle of the Bastards, the giant fracas near the end of season 6. “My background’s horses originally, so I’ve been involved as a performer in pretty much all the large horse battles over the last 20 years,” he said. “We really wanted to shoot a horse battle that the films that come after us would be referencing. And we hopefully have achieved that.“

"What was really good about Battle of the Bastards was that unlike a film, where you mostly burn most of your time doing main unit, cast and the action can get a backseat and become a few days of second unit, we had a very very clear plan, he went on. We had a plan each day of what we’d shoot, we’d spent five days establishing, 15 days shooting the battle then five days shooting the Winterfell segment at the end. And we stuck to that plan."

“It’s extremely rare to make a plan and really stick to it, regardless of what the weather does,” he continued. “But Game of Thrones does not stop when it starts raining. If it’s raining, we shoot. If it’s sunny, we shoot. Whatever happens, we shoot.” Those bastards aren’t battle themselves.

Dunne, meanwhile, revealed which cast members stood out during weapons training: Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane) and Maisie Williams (Arya Stark). Considering how often those characters use swords, that seems only natural.

Before you ask, Irman didn’t reveal anything about what stunts are coming in season 7. (“I think you might have to wait until season seven comes out for any answers on season seven.”)

The real question is, with Irlam’s expertise in setting things on fire, where was Irlam when HBO was trying to melt that block of ice to reveal the premiere date?