As the Game of Thrones PR machine goes into overdrive, fans grow heady with nervous anticipation, as well as a little anxious the about show’s conclusion. Never fear, though, as the cast recently sat down for an interview with Collider, and they let the positive feelings flow.
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Worried that Game of Thrones‘ final season might be a bit of a letdown? Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth) wants to reassure you that won’t be an issue. “They’ve fired kitchen sinks out of a howitzer at this thing,” he said, bringing the imagery. “They’ve thrown everything at it. God bless them. They have tried to exit this story with as much honor as possible and I think they have. It’s remarkable.”
The cast has yet to see the finished episodes (apart from the first) but they’ve read the scripts and filmed the scenes, and they are jazzed about the ending. Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont) described how he approached the first first table read:
"[I] sort of read it as a sort of fan in the sense that it was an unusual thing for us all to be in the same room and to hear it. And really everyone was there. And so it was just yeah, having the perfect kind of radio play kind of unfold and see what happened … So it was a lovely thing to do at the beginning."
We all know that season 8 is going to serve up action scenes like never before. Glen talked a bit about how the final battle compares to previous armed conflicts: “ was exceptional. A great deal of thought has gone into it and it took a great deal of time.”
"But it was sort of realized within an inch of its life in terms of sort of structuring it. So you’re always just a small part in a much, much bigger thing and you try and do what you do correctly, or — well, by preparing as much as you can. […] It was hard, it was really intense, and it went on for a long time."
Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) tried to explain what she told E! News a few months back: that fans would “need therapy” after watching the final season: “Because this season has really outdone the others in all regards,” she says. “I think that the production values and the way in which everyone was pushed is much further than anything they’ve ever done on the show before.”
"The scale is so much bigger, and I think that … it’s been something that’s united people across the globe where they have an experience with — whether it’s viewing, so they have a communal experience … [A]nd I think that our performances this season are so powerful that people will actually die when they watch them."
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) was sitting beside Christie and kept on the pressure on. “You never answered the question,” he said. “Why would they need therapy?”
At this point, Christie has to retreat. “It was a throwaway statement. I mean I — it was something I said on a red carpet. I mean, I don’t really think that. I think that they’ll enjoy it.”
Coster-Waldau decides to leave Christie alone and moves on, adding “nd then you’ll be pleased because I think it’s a great ending and then you’ll also be really disappointed because it’s over.”
John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) talked about the lasting legacy of the show. “I just hope that – and I think it’s already kind of happening – that a lot of the TV that comes after it is taking lessons from it and using it as a springboard in terms of what can be achieved through the medium of television and how given the right set of people and the right circumstances it can rival cinema and it’s got the right to be ambitious.”
"It has created a whole new sense of ambition in TV that wasn’t really there before. It’d done affecting drama before, but there’s never been anything, certainly on this visual scale before, and I think that TV is no longer seen as a kind of poor cousin of cinema and I think that — I just hope that TV going forward feels that we’ve empowered it to be as ambitious as we’ve been."
Are Conleth Hill (Varys) and Issac Hempstead-Wright (Bran) emotional about the end of the show? Or are they just ready for it to be over? “A bit of both,” says Wright. Okay, that’s great, but is there anything to the fan theory than Varys is actually a merman? “We’re confirming it here – Episode 3.”
Hill was fully on board: “He is the man from Atlantis. No, no, I still don’t know where that came from and I still think it was too much skunk.”
In other news, Joe Dempsie (Gendry) tells Entertainment Weekly that fans keep confusing him with Daniel Portman (Podrick Payne). Dempsie thinks his character’s new short haircut may be adding to the problem: “It made sense to me his black hair was kind of his signifier. He was laying low in the intervening years. And it makes more distinguishable to Pod — which is helpful because we get confused all the time.”
All the time? “All the time,” Dempsie exclaims. “There have been numerous occasions where someone will say, ‘You’re in Game of Thrones aren’t you?’ And I’ll be like, ‘Yeah,’ and they’re like, ‘You’re the clumsy dude!’ And I’ll say, ‘No, but he’s great.'”
Beyond discussing the brutal night shoots he worked to film the Battle of Winterfell, Dempsie talked about Gendry getting back together with Arya (Maisie Williams) in season 8:
"So a lot for Gendry is those two catching up and reconnecting and finding out what they’ve been doing. I really enjoyed working with Maisie in seasons 1-3 and I even said back then she’s one of the most talented actors I’ve ever worked with […] I was looking forward to getting back on set with Maisie."
Jaime and Brienne, Gendry and Arya … so much potential for heartwarming reunions. And then we remember that this is Game of Thrones. Yeah, Christie is right … we’re gonna need therapy.
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