The production design on Game of Thrones season 8 will “eclipse” all that’s come before

Michelle Clapton, the costume designer on Game of Thrones for all but a few episodes of the show, recently won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for her work on season 7. Clapton won the same award last year for her work on The Crown, and spoke about switching from one to the other to GoldDerby:

"It was incredibly sad not to do the second season of ‘The Crown’ but I made the decision to get back to ‘Game of Thrones’ because it’s my baby. I grew with it. They took a chance on me when no one else was giving me stuff to do. I felt like I owed it to them and I did go back and I’m pleased I did. It’s the end of it and I’ve seen it all the way through."

Clapton is referring to the short hiatus she took during Game of Thrones season 6, although she did return in time to create Cersei’s stunning goth look for the finale.

Anyway, don’t tell Cersei, but Clapton names Daenerys as her favorite character to design for create costumes for:

"She’s changed so much from the beginning. It’s nice to now to see her in the season just gone (seven) – how she is slowly getting the silhouette that her brother had. For all of the journeys that she’s been through, she is becoming a Targaryen again. I think that’s really interesting and I really enjoyed telling the story with silhouettes and fabrics and colors. Colors can say so much – someone suddenly start wearing a color which shifts their allegiance, it makes you question what’s going on. It’s really good fun."

Clapton doubled down on her love of dressing Emilia Clarke when choosing her favorite outfit from season 7: Dany’s winter coat. “I just wanted to take her somewhere completely different and it was such a collaborative effort. I drew it but I didn’t know how I was going to make it.” Clapton credited her team for the final product, saying they “just experimented and came up with that.”

Clapton wasn’t the only Game of Thrones crew member to win a BAFTA this year; Rob Cameron and Deborah Riley took home the award for production design, and had their own talk with GoldDerby. When Cameron wasn’t vaguely teasing season 8 as “bigger and better” and “huge,” Riley talked about the process she goes through every time she gets a new script: “When I first read the script, I’m definitely a fan. With the second read, I become a member of the crew. It’s when I become serious.” Cameron concurred. “When we’re watching the episodes I definitely just look at what we’ve done and analyze it.”

At one point in time, the production designers could lean on the Song of Ice and Fire books for inspiration. But now that the show has blown past the novels, Riley looks to other people for direction. “It’s the show-runners,” she said. “Everything comes through David Benioff and Dan Weiss. They give us everything, it all comes from them.”

As for their proudest moments from their time on the show, Cameron chose working on the Dragonpit set from season 7, (a location we’re returning to in season 8), while Riley fondly remembered Daenerys’ audience chamber in Meereen. More importantly, Cameron couldn’t help teasing season 8 just a little more, saying “season eight is going to eclipse all of that, I’m just saying.”

Next: Season 8 filming: A fire blazes in King’s Landing

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