The Game of Thrones cast talks character meetings, action scenes, and season 7’s quickened pace

The Game of Thrones cast members are out in force promoting season 7. A critical mass of them stopped by The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the quickened pace we can expect from the next seven episodes.

“It’s incredibly fast,” said Kit Harington (Jon Snow). “It’s a different TV show, really. I read it and couldn’t really believe what I was reading, since we’ve set the bar for slow-paced TV over the years, with characters not meeting when you think they’re going to meet. It was almost frustratingly slow. Now, everything’s changed. Everything ramps up.”

That sentiment was echoed by many of Harington’s colleagues. Let run some of their comments down:

• Conleth Hill (Varys): “The pulse is quickened. The heartbeat’s quickened. Everything is ramping up toward some final showdown.”
• Gwendoline Christie (Brienne): “It really feels like we’re moving along at a lick, doesn’t it? It feels like there’s a lot of pace, because we only have 13 episodes left to tell this story…The worlds are starting to fold in on themselves.”
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime): “We’re so used to having characters in different parts of this world. Now, they’re all very close. It’s difficult to get into because we don’t want to spoil the show, but you do feel this momentum.”
• Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm): “The storytelling is moving at a much faster pace now. But it doesn’t feel like it’s rushing toward a finish line; it feels like the urgency comes from the storytelling. Everybody is on edge.”
• Alfie Allen: “There’s a real sense of urgency happening now. You can see all these characters joining together, characters who haven’t crossed paths before now meeting up with each other. You can see the end game coming now.”

So I’m getting the impression that season 7 moves faster than usual. Is it just me?

But it’s not just the pace that’s changed. Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran) notes that the team has pumped up the spectacle as well.

"It’s nuts. We shoot with two units in Belfast all of the time, and every other day, it felt like some massive sequence was going on. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, where are you going?’ Then they’ll recount to you the massive scene they were about to go off and shoot. It was like that reading the script."

How will the production team squeeze all this in to just seven episodes? Conleth Hill asked fans to put it in perspective. “[Y]ou may think you’re only getting seven and six instead of ten and ten,” he said, referring to the number of episodes in seasons 7 and 8, respectively, “but really, you were only meant to get ten episodes, not thirteen. You’re getting an extra three, rather than less.”

Bradley meanwhile, reminded fans the production has every intention of telling the same amount of story in seven episodes that it usually needs 10 for, while Wright assured everyone that these seven episodes took just as long to film as a normal 10. “It’s like, basically we have seven episodes of what’s usually episode nine,” he said.

Hannah Murray (Gilly) put words to what a lot of the actors seemed to be thinking when she said that seasons 7 and 8 feels “like a two-part final season.” So it’s less that we’re getting two truncated final seasons and more that we’re getting one super-sized final one.

We’ll let Liam Cunningham (Davos) have the last word here, since he’s so consistently entertaining.

"I will say specifically the fire and ice thing with Jon and Dany and all of that business … people have seen the lady arriving, with all of her entourage. She’s hitting Westeros. Jon is in Westeros. There’s an inevitability about this that nobody’s fighting. People are coming together. It was slightly odd for us this year. It’s slightly different. Instead of all these disparate stories happening, we zip from one area to another. There’s a coming together. Who’s coming together? I ain’t telling ya."

Elsewhere, even more Game of Thrones stars — including rarely seen figures like Richard Dormer (Beric Dondarrion) talked with Access Hollywood, starting with a discussion about the action scenes we can expect this year.

Per Harington, there are “a couple of huge battles this year” on par with the Battle of the Bastards, although he qualifies that the action sequences this year are completely different, as the production isn’t interested in trying to top its own accomplishments.

Next up, Gemma Whelan and Alfie Allen talk about Theon and Yara getting back together in season 6.

Below, Anderson, Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei), and Iain Glen (Jorah) discuss what they think has made the show so successful. “I think there’s something very plausible about the history,” says Glen.

And finally, Murray, Bradley, and Conleth Hill (resplendent with hair) talk about how to not giving away spoilers. Basically: just don’t do it. It’s not that hard.

Murray, we learn, is one of the cast members who has actually read the Song of Ice and Fire novels — when she mentioned Joffrey’s death to actor Jack Gleeson, he tricked her into believing he was hearing it for the first time. Cheeky.

Next: John Bradley: There's 'a point to keeping Sam around.'

Game of Thrones season 7 debuts in four days, but there’s likely still a lot of teasing to go.