The Game Revealed: Go behind the scenes of Cersei and Ellaria’s confrontation

With Game of Thrones season 7 in the books, HBO has been taking us behind the scenes of every episode with its “The Game Revealed” series. The new episode, about “The Queen’s Justice,” is available to watch in full on HBO Now, and HBO has released a clip about the deadly confrontation between Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) and Tyene Sand (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) on YouTube. Enjoy:

Right off the bat, it’s wild to learn that this powerful scene was the first one filmed for season 7; they didn’t exactly warm up with some easy stuff. That makes the performances from everyone involved all the more impressive, and they were pretty impressive to begin with.

And none more so than than Lena Headey’s performance as Cersei. It’s interesting that director Mark Mylod implies that Cersei’s vulnerability in the scene was a choice that Headey herself made, rather than something he spearheaded. This show is incredibly fortunate to have her.

Also, note that, in the video, Headey’s delivery of the line “Why did you do that?” is from a different take than the one used in the final episode. I wonder how many times they had to shoot this.

Helen Sloan – HBO

But as good as Headey was, Varma was matching her beat for beat. And now we know that she had to be sawed out of those manacles at the end of the day. Yikes. Good for the realism, though, I guess.

Next: Entertainment Weekly reveals “Secrets from the Dragonpit”

Keep these coming, HBO; they are fascinating.

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