Joe Dempsie talks about how filming Game of Thrones was different this time around

Joe Dempsie (Gendry) is among several Game of Thrones cast members to have finished filming their scenes for season 8 — we know he was done by the time Con of Thrones rolled around in late May 2018. In a newly published interview with Metro (but given earlier in June 2018), he gave away about how long he was working on the production as a whole, saying that he finished shooting the British spy drama Deep State in September of last year. Then, after “a few weeks” off, he started work on Game of Thrones season 8. “I only wrapped on that 3 weeks ago,” he said.

So let’s put that together. Production on Game of Thrones season 8 started in October 2017, with Dempsie spotted in Belfast at the time. Then he wrapped sometime in May 2018, meaning he was filming for around seven months.

Now, he could have had breaks in there, but still: that’s quite a long time! As the last Baratheon (bastard) alive, Gendry could potentially be quite important to the endgame. Let’s hope this presages a big role for him in the final episodes.

Dempsie also talked about his return to the show after three seasons away. While Gendry was making weapons in King’s Landing, Game of Thrones had gone from being a popular show to a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, to the point where Dempsie felt it “was like having an entirely new job…So when I got the call to come back it was basically, ‘Hey do you want to join the biggest show on the planet?’ So I was like, ‘Yeah, go on then.’”

"There are some parts that do feel different. Funnily enough, the most palpable difference is just in terms of security. I mean security in terms of plot and scripts and any information pertaining to where we might be shooting at any given time. During the whole course of season 7 and season 8 I have never laid eyes on a shooting schedule. Your filming dates are on a need to know basis. You don’t get hard copies of scripts anymore. They are all on this special app. Which are triple locked. The level of security has upped massively."

I guess sites this like this can take some of the credit/blame for that. Fans do love their spoilers.

Other things had changed, too, like the level of attention the cast members got when they filmed in Seville, Spain. “We were staying in this beautiful hotel in the middle of town. Within two days of being there, obviously word had spread that we were there, and just arriving back from work in the car it was like a film premiere. Every night. Just a hoard of people trying to get a glimpse of some of the actors. We never had to contend with any of that before.”

Most of the cast members were on the show as it grew in notoriety, and had time to get used to it; I can’t imagine the shock of coming back after three years only to find yourself swarmed with unexpected attention. According to Dempsie, Belfast was much quieter. “There were parts that were different, but in general it felt like three years had just sped by and I was just picking up where I had left off.”

Finally, Dempsie ruminated on the legacy of Game of Thrones, opining that it “seems to have become an emblem of peak TV.”

"The lasting legacy of ‘Game Of Thrones’ is a real blurring of the lines of traditional views of TV and cinema. I think that really suits actors. It just means that concept is everything now. If your script is good enough you can legitimately take it to George Clooney. And he might do it. There’s no barrier to the caliber of actor that you can get for these things. They look pretty indistinguishable from one another…And that suits writers and directors as well, because they can tell their stories over 8 hours or 10 hours rather than an hour and a half."

With shows like Westworld and Amazon’s tremendously expensive Lord of the Rings show hot on Game of Thrones’ heels, it looks like that other shows are already trying to pick up where Thrones is going to leave off.

And what legacy will Gendry leave? Tune in next year…

Next: Season 8 filming: King’s Landing is [SPOILER]

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