Nikolaj Coster-Waldau discusses Jaime’s desperate Hail Mary

Last night, Jaime Lannister tried to kill Daenerys Targaryen. At the beginning of this series, that sentence seemed pretty far-fetched, but after watching the Mother of Dragons turn his army to ash, Jaime was ready to do whatever it took to stop her. But before he could reach her, he was tackled off his horse and into a nearby lake, his fate unknown.

Entertainment Weekly talked to star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to dig what it could out of him about what Jaime was thinking, and where he goes from here. Coster-Waldau recalls that, when he got the script for the episode, it said that “One of our main characters is about to die…” All things considered, he’d probably prefer it be Daenerys. “Jaime is such an idiot that he thinks for a second, ‘If I can do this, I can win the whole thing in a Hail Mary,’” Coster-Waldau says of what was going through Jaime’s head during his charge. Tyrion seemed to agree with Coster-Waldau that Jaime was being an idiot, but from where we were sitting, it looked like he got pretty close to achieving his goal.

Macall B. Polay – HBO

Fans will probably be unsurprised to learn that last night’s battle set a record for most stuntmen ever set on fire for a film or TV production. All in all, it set 20 people on fire for one shot, and had 73 “fire burns.” Pretty much no way that couldn’t have happened, considering the devastation on display. All of that fire came courtesy of Daenerys and her dragon, which made some viewers sympathize with the burning Lannister soldiers more than they expected. Coster-Waldau put those feelings in context:

"Even though Daenerys is the hero and the Lannisters are the villains, being burned alive is not great. It’s a terrifying thing when this monster flamethrower comes along and incinerates thousands and thousands of men who are just doing their job."

One of the things that made the battle so interesting was that we had sympathies on both sides. If there’s more of that in store in the future, we’re not sure our hearts can take it.

And what about that cliffhanger handing? Naturally, Coster-Waldau wouldn’t reveal anything specific, but when EW asked him whether Jaime was doomed by his loyalty to Cersei, he replied “It’s not going to end well for Jaime Lannister, I can’t imagine.”

So sit on that for six days.

Next: Reading Between the Lines: How the dialogue in season 7 could foreshadow the show’s ending

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