George R.R. Martin wishes Game of Thrones had “a few more seasons”

Game of Thrones is ending, which has to be a little weird for George R.R. Martin, who wrote the still-unfinished novel series on which the show is based. Famously, the show adapted the books for the first five or so seasons but had to keep going when it ran out of book material. With the ending of Game of Thrones just a few weeks away, Martin will watch the ending of his story before he gets a chance to write it.

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In an interview with Rolling Stone, Martin spoke at lengths about the series, how he feels about this strange state of affairs, and the casting process for some of the young stars, including Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams, who play Sansa and Arya Stark respectively. Martin was involved in the casting process early on, and finding young actors for roles so close to his heart was no easy task:

"I have to give an immense amount of credit to our casting director, Nina Gold. The casting of Arya was particularly difficult, as I somewhat feared it would be; I think we looked at more potential Aryas than any other role in this show…These are not parts that require the girls to be cute, and deliver clever little one-liners to put down their idiot father, like you do in a sitcom. These are girls that are gonna go through really huge personal traumas. They’re gonna see death and war. They’re gonna see people close to them beheaded. So after looking at all these tapes, particularly for Arya, I was saying, “We are so screwed.” Then I saw Maisie’s tape, and it was like, “There she is. There she is. Arya.” She’s saying the lines, she’s alive, she’s got Arya’s spirit, you know? ] It was incredible. [Showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] and I said, “Yeah, we found her, hooray. Send up the skyrockets.”"

Finding Sansa was a tad bit easier. “Sophie was great also – we found her more quickly. And then when we cut the two of them together … I mean, they took to each other almost from the first shoot.”

And so many years later, their chemistry and friendship endures.

As the show went on, it started to deviate more and more from Martin’s books, to the point where, in season 5, Sansa was married to Ramsay Bolton, a fate that befalls a completely different character — Jeyne Poole — on the page. Rolling Stone asked if he had an “emotional reaction” to that change.

"Well, yeah — of course you have an emotional reaction. I mean, would I prefer they do it exactly the way I did it? Sure. But I’ve been on the other side of it, too. I’ve adapted work by other people, and I didn’t do it exactly the way they did it, so …. Some of the deviation, of course, is because I’ve been so slow with these books. I really should’ve finished this thing four years ago — and if I had, maybe it would be telling a different story here. It’s two variations of the same story, or a similar story, and you get that whenever anything is adapted."

Martin worked in Hollywood for years, so it’s no surprise that he’s understanding about the way this works. He explains his feelings by talking about the different versions of Gone With the Wind, which was both a very successful book and a hugely influential movie:

"[Scarlett O’Hara had] three children in the book, one by each husband. She had one child in the movie. And in real life, of course, Scarlett O’Hara had no children, because she never existed. Margaret Mitchell made her up. The book is there. You can pick it up and read Mitchell’s version of it, or you can see the movie and see David Selznick’s version of it. I think they’re both true to the spirit of the work, and hopefully that’s also true of Game of Thrones on one hand, and A Song of Ice and Fire on the other hand."

So how does Martin feel about the show ending before he completes the final two books in his Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring? It’s nice to know that he’s just as torn over it as I am:

"You know, it’s complex. I’m a little sad, actually. I wish we had a few more seasons. But I understand. Dave and Dan are gonna go on to do other things, and I’m sure some of the actors were signed up for like seven or eight years, and they would like to go on and take other roles. All of that is fair. I’m not angry or anything like that, but there’s a little wistfulness in me."

Martin became less involved with the production of the series as it went on. He hasn’t read the scripts for the final six episodes, “although I’ve had meetings with David and Dan where we’ve discussed stuff.” He’s not going in completely blind, but by and large he’ll be watching each new episode along with the rest of us, discovering it as he goes. Does that mean he doesn’t know how it ends? Will he be surprised?

"Well, to a degree. I mean, I think … the major points of the ending will be things that I told them, you know, five or six years ago. But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added."

Can he arrange for a video of himself watching and reacting to the series finale? Just an idea.

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