Pre-production on Game of Thrones season 8 begins
By Dan Selcke
Game of Thrones season 7 will be over in a week, and then begins the long dark night of waiting for season 8, the show’s last hurrah. Happily, it seems the crew will be getting down to business soon — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) has said that filming will start up in October.
And it looks like pre-production is already on the way. One fan noticed that there’s been activity at the exterior set for Winterfell in Moneyglass, Northern Ireland.
The crew has removed the front wall of the Winterfell set. Things are happening.
Next: Valar Morghulis: Who’s most likely to die in “Beyond the Wall”?
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Game of Thrones season 7 isn’t over, and some of its cast members are still unpacking what’s happened. For example, Tom Hopper talked to Elle about playing Dickon Tarly. “When I first read for the part, they use alias names for the auditions, so I didn’t know that was the role I was going for,” he said. “I didn’t know my name was going to be Dickon. When I was on set, I thought, Is it actually Dickon? Surely it’s not Dickon. When I introduced myself, I went with Dick-in, instead of Dick-on. And the producers were like, no no, it is actually Dickon.”
"Ever since I first got introduced on the show, it’s been this onslaught of people ripping me for this name, Dickon. I think that’s the thing with Game of Thrones, it comes with such a ridiculously big following, it’s hard not to have some kind of fan reaction, I suppose, when you’re on it."
We’re going with Bronn on this one.
Although Dickon didn’t appear in too many episode of the show, he had a memorable run. Hopper agrees.
"To be honest, when I took the role I had a feeling that he was probably going to [die], because it was Game of Thrones. It’s fine, because I think you go into a show like that, and as long as you have a good run, you get a few episodes out of it, it’s great, it’s a bonus. I had a great time on it, and I had a few episodes there where I got to do a lot of good stuff. I was very fortunate, I thought."
People made dick jokes about him, he saved Jaime from a Dothraki rider, he got burned alive…yeah, Dickon had a good-but-brief run.
As for that getting-burned-alive bit, Hopper remembers how committed the extras were to being afraid of a big green ball on a stick that was supposed to represent a dragon. “We were told to imagine that we were facing a firing squad, and I thought the way it turned out was brilliant.”
Hopper is next looking forward to playing real-life climber Gary Hemming in Climber, a break from his usual penchant for appearing in fantasy and period shows like Merlin and Black Sails. “Maybe it goes with being sleeveless in a lot of things,” he said. “It always ends up that I’m sleeveless! But I wasn’t in Game of Thrones, which was different for me…My last part in Black Sails was called Billy Bones, so with Billy Bones and Dickon, between the two it’s the funniest name you can make.”
Macall B. Polay – HBO
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